Google to Compete with Nielsen?

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.'"

Comments

stupid people = stupid shows

[Bluude]

Yeah, but even in a society where everyone gets a vote, you are still going to have around 20% that like reality shows, 15% that enjoy game shows, 20% that like daytime talkshows, 20% that like medical drama, and 20% that enjoy cop drama. So even in pefect world where everyone is counted, we will still have a lot of crap on tv because there are a lot of stupid people in the world that find comfort in watching the same old crap they have always watched.

Heck sometimes I think those people are threatened when a new show like firefly comes on. they just don't know how to classify it so they don't bother watching it.

Re:stupid people = stupid shows

[algerath]

GP doen't need to point to medical/cop dramas to prove his point about a lot of stupid people. One just needs to go to a public place and observe for a while, it becomes obvious very quickly.

Someone who is going off on someone else for being an "arrogant elitist" should not start a sentence with "people like you" and then call them stupid.

Yup, I am sure Firefly was cancelled due to his attitude. That must have been it. I bet mine didn't help either.

I don't watch commercials, according to your logic I am smart, Thank You. I don't think commercial watching is an accurate predictor of intellect. I have seen people I know staring blankly at the set watching some crap about cheetos or whatever and realized why advrtising is such a big business.

just my .02

Algerath

Re:Sounds more like

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt Google is going to be conducting research surveys or distributing their own rating monitoring boxes.

With video.google.com, the audience comes to them rather than the other way around.

Re:Google's MO

[ciroknight]

Web accelerators and Word Processors lend themselves brilliantly to information collection and research. Accelerators help the company to see what pages are loading slowly and why, word processors help them see what people are writing about and technologies of dealing with it (such as different compression algorithms, search algorithms, etc).

Add spreadsheet in there and maybe Google's trying to find a better way of extracting metadata from Spreadsheets. Add blogs in there and maybe Google's trying to find a better way to tell a Blog from an ordinary webpage to improve search results.

As you can see, each element lends itself to Google's core business: helping people find things.

Google builds geographical barriers on Internet

[Elixon]

I'm sure that audience is coming to Video.Google.com, but is google coming to the audience?

This is what google served me instead of the clips in "Music Videos" menu:

"We're sorry, but the provider of this video has not authorized Google to display this video in your location.
To see more videos visit our home page."

Does it matter that I'm from EU?

Already happening

[apnielsen]

Nielsen's been working on total measurement for years. Arbitron and VNU (current holders of Nielsen Media research) got together to build Project Apollo. However, because of the trouble Arbitron is having getting its Portable People Meter accredited, Apollo's deploying Nielsen's A/P Meter instead, which I've commented on before.

I work at Nielsen Media at the GTIC facility in Oldsmar FL and I've been hearing about Apollo for many years, but it seems that the rest of the world has only heard about it recently. Project Apollo has been described (internally) as the "holy grail" of measurement, which follows a consumer across every media channel and measures the affect on purchasing habits.

What it looks like Google is doing is a subset of Project Apollo, and even if it could compete on the TV/video side they probably need to license the tech from Nielsen. I'd love to have Google as an ally, but as a competitor I think they'll find Nielsen pretty hard to dislodge.

Re:Sounds more like

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt Google is going to be conducting research surveys or distributing their own rating monitoring boxes.

Actually, they already have: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/10/132922 7

With a simple application, they can turn your laptop (pre-deployed) into a ratings monitor.

Nielson is slipping...

[7Prime]

My boss (I work as a commercial producer for a TV station), is starting to consider dropping Nielson, as many other TV stations around the country are doing. Having a Nielson rating tends to do more harm than good (and trust me, in the rural area I live in, there is NOONE else even close to being able to compete with us for viewership). Large corporations, while still looking to Nielson for guidence, have been doing so less and less. From what I hear, it's quickly becoming one of the biggest concerns in the broadcast industry. So this move to branch out into other fields doesn't surprise me.