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Google to Compete with Nielsen?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the google-speculation dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Jason Lee Miller thinks that Nielsen Media Research's ambitious new plan for measuring all types of video audiences could put it into competition with everyone's favorite company: Google. From the article: 'The Mountain View's next potential rival: Nielsen Media Research, the audience measurement company that has held a virtual monopoly in the sector for decades. And it shouldn't be surprising. Google's MO is information collection and research.'"

5 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good idea! by bartyboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds to me like you're more upset about the cancelling of Firefly than the Nielson rating system.

    Nielson samples a very wide demographic, not just "boring old fogies". You can read about it here. The wikipedia article also brings up the point that their research system is not perfect, but it's close enough to give advertisers a picture of who's watching what. If it wasn't, Nielson wouldn't be in the TV ratings system for long.

  2. Re:Good idea! by drsquare · · Score: 4, Informative
    Nielson samples a very wide demographic, not just "boring old fogies".


    It only samples a very small demographic: people who want to be monitored.
  3. Google juggernaut =bad? by spineboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is anyone else getting a little freaked out at how much Google is attempting to do on the web? It does stuff well, and a free market indicates that it is doing well, but I worry about a monopoly eventually. Papers and radios have limitations on how much of the audience that their company can reach, so as to prevent a monopolistic control over the information that people receive. The internet should be no different. How to enforce that though? - Make Google break up like Ma Bell did in the 70's? And at what point? Not yet I think, but the time will come soone I think.

    --
    ..........FULL STOP.
  4. Re:Sounds more like by apnielsen · · Score: 4, Informative
    Nielsen make their money conducting market research surveys.
    ACNielsen makes their money conducting market research surveys. Nielsen Media Research makes their money by selling overnight TV viewing data to networks, advertisers, and whoever else wants to pay for it.
  5. Re:Good idea! by apnielsen · · Score: 3, Informative

    Is Nielsen doing it differently now? We had a Nielsen box a few years ago, and it had buttons on it you were supposed to press to indicate which members of the family were watching at any given time.
    No. People meters have had the buttons since 1991 (possibly before that too).

    It was fun for the first couple hours, just because of the novelty, but then it got real old real quick. Of course, it was terribly inaccurate. People forget to press their buttons when they start or stop watching.
    Pressing buttons is currently the only accredited way of making sure you're actually watching. Just because you're in the same room as a TV set doesn't mean you're watching. As you point out, it also introduces a certain amount of inaccuracy. "Button fatigue" is a hot topic in Research, and they're looking at everything from adapting A/P Meters to installing facial recognition devices to fix it.

    We'd press extra buttons to add fictitious viewers for shows we really liked. Etc.

    That's possibly why you're no longer a Nielsen home. We do notice these things, believe it or not. ;)

    Each day, Nielsen publishes an install count and an intab count. Installs are all the homes with people meters. Intabs are those homes that aren't trying to play Tetris on their set tops.