Nielsen Will Start Tracking Netflix and Amazon Video

An anonymous reader writes Nielsen is going to start studying the streaming behavior of online viewers for the first time. Netflix has never released detailed viewership data, but Nielsen says they have developed a way for its rating meters to track shows by identifying their audio. From the article: "Soon Nielsen, the standard-bearer for TV ratings, may change that. The TV ratings company revealed to the Wall Street Journal that it's planning to begin tracking viewership of online video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video in December by analyzing the audio of shows that are being streamed. The new ratings will come with a lot of caveats—they won't track mobile devices and won't take into account Netflix's large global reach—but they will provide a sense for the first time which Netflix shows are the most popular. And if the rest of the media world latches onto these new ratings as a standard, Netflix won't be able to ignore them."

Comments

What service, exactly, is Nielsen providing?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> they will provide a sense for the first time which Netflix shows are the most popular

Umm...wouldn't Netflix already have this information at its fingertips in its own logs?

Re:What service, exactly, is Nielsen providing?

[DerekLyons]

Netfilx has it - the folks that want to sell shows to Netflix, the folks that have shows on Netflix and want to keep them honest, etc... etc... these are the people who are the Nielsen's customers for this data.

What?

[roc97007]

> Nielsen Will Start Tracking Netflix and Amazon Video

What, you mean they haven't been tracking on demand and streaming video? Then, how are they at all relevant? The TV Tray Generation, who watches TV in real time and sits through the commercials, have been dying out for some time, and as a group are all but irrelevant now.

Thinking about it, this may help to explain why network suits regularly drop promising series that go on to become streaming favorites. It's not just that they don't understand their audience, but also that they're going by statistics from an organization that also no longer understands their audience.