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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.'"
I doubt Google is going to be conducting research surveys or distributing their own rating monitoring boxes.
The part they are going to overlap on is a small part of the publicly visible loss leader.
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Perhaps then the demographics will represent the hip, happening and geeky crowd as well as whatever boring old fogies Nielson represents. I hate it when my favourite shows are cancelled because "ratings were down".
Then again I'm not 'Merican, so I have no idea why good shows get cancelled *cough*Firefly*cough*. I just know that they do, and the dumb ones remain (latest reality show, WHO WANTS TO MARRY A MIDGET MILLIONAIRE APPRENTICE?)
... and word processors. Oh, and web accelerators.
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
Wonder if either of them will actually manage to get the long tail of consumption recorded? Then maybe the rest of us won't have to put up with all of the rubbish that passes entertainment in the mass market.
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.
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?
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
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.
Perhaps it will actually stop the freekin' weird US scheduling.
Seriously - Why do the studios and advertisers rate the ratings so highly? The system is inherently gamable, so the very act of gathering statistics affects the schedules. This is why they have "sweeps". Is there somethign magical about that time? Nope. It's just when the people who are doing the counting decide they're going to look. If it wasn't for this, there woukld eb a much more regular spread of quality programming throughout the year, rather than the bursts of new episodes followded by weeks of repeats.
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.
I've noticed Google page loads seem a hell of a lot slower lately than say one year ago. I'm not sure why, some folks blame Analytics, but it seems that sometime front page loading drags. I've turned off personalised search and it's about the same.
It's gotten so bad at times that I'm able to open a second tab, load then execute the same search on yahoo! before Google presents its front page.
In a recent IHT article, Schmidt first admitted problems, mentioning "Those machines are full. We have a huge machine crisis." .
The Register also raised several complaints from users about the (negative) impact of recent changes.
I think Google should take a pause, and reinforce their core business before heading out to capture new markets. Their aggressive growth strategy threatens to turn them into the Microsoft of internet computing; get there first, capture the market and worry about quality later.
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