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Nielsen Adapting To Modern TV-Watching
Ant wrote to mention a C|Net story discussing fundamental changes in how the Nielsen company tracks viewership. From the article: "CNET says that the Nielsen company is finally taking one of several steps aimed at adapting to the new television/TV audience (those who use TiVo or another service to record prime time shows for viewing later) on December 26th, 2005. Ratings will be broken out by how shows are watched--live, later in the day or within a seven-day period. Over time, Nielsen will also move to measure viewing that takes place via iPods, cellular/cell phones, laptops, and other digital devices that are gaining TV privileges. The company also will track audiences for on-demand fare. The steps are a radical change for Nielsen, reflecting an overall paradigm shift that's shaking up the television world. The audience is taking control. And TV companies are scrambling to catch up."
One of my employees is a Nielsen viewer. I can't believe those guys are still going to keep ticking.
With video watching moving towards an on-demand basis, will advertisers really need to hire a company to track viewer preferences? The best thing advertisers can do is replac Tivo/MCE/Myth/whatever with completely free tuner/PVR units. Tivo can already tell advertisers what commercials were watched or skipped, what parts of a TV show were paused or reviewed, what channels are bounced between most often, etc. As TV becomes quickly available through iTunes or direct download, IPTV, and other "right now" provisions, we'll see our information traded in exchange for free TV.
I still believe that TV show production companies will find ways to offer advertising and spyware-free shows (a la the DVD format) for those willing to pay extra. Remember, advertising only exists for shows that are being watched in real time. Video taping, downloading, PVR, whatever means ads will likely be skipped or deleted altogether. We will definitely see more product placement as well as more pop-up advertising on top of TV shows as time goes on. Technology is quickly destroying the efficacy of advertising, so advertising will either have to morph or be left in the dust.
Nielsen, IMHO, is already being put into the incinerator. Their services were nice (*pat on head*) but its time for the new kid to play.
I wish Nielson could figure out that pre-announcing the date of US sweeps week ruins TV viewing. For one week out of the year every channel simultaneously has great programming. Then for the other fifty one weeks it sucks. Advertisers are stupid for believing that sweeps week is at all representative of viewing patterns. Imagine how advertising rates would have been set if 9/11 had happened during sweeps week - cable news would have had top share.
Too damn late for Farscape or Futurama...
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The steps are a radical change for Nielsen, reflecting an overall paradigm shift that's shaking up the television world. The audience is taking control. And TV companies are scrambling to catch up."
This isn't a paradigm shift, it's expansion of technology. Media entertainment is still media entertainment and people still watch it to be entertained. The ways people can access that media have expanded, but there has been no overall shift as a result.
Also, audiences aren't taking control. These extensions of media access are tickling media providers to death. Even Tivo, while cutting out advertising, reflects the audience demand for More! More! The problems Tivo presents to a media provider are only temporary. Media providers are recognizing the audience's unquenchable thirst for more! more! more! and they are finding ways to make even more money off of that thirst. It isn't victory of the audience, it's victory of the provider.
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Interesting, but those execs would be shooting themselves in the foot. Advert $$ depends on ROI. (in the long term, the market will relax to this position, but in the short term, companies may actively be measuring and optimizing) So improperly measuring viewership is a fast road to losing all advertising dollars.
What I've been wondering though is why we have neilson anymore at all. With the advent of digital cable, it would seem to me that it's now possible to monitor directly the viewing habits of millions of people. That's a large sample. If made optional, i would even opt-in to just such monitoring, since it would mean that every time i watched my favorite shows i'd be casting a vote to keep it on the air.
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