Posted by chicagomedia.org on August 17, 2009 at 14:39:04:
Coalition of media firms, marketers may form own group to challenge Nielsen measurements
Phil Rosenthal
Tribune Media
August 16, 2009
They're supposedly calling it the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, but we might as well think of it as the "No Viewer or Dollar Left Behind" initiative.
A group of leading media companies and marketers are talking about creating a consortium that could challenge Nielsen Media Research.
The attempt to establish a new measurement of video audiences as they splinter off TV to the Internet and mobile devices could be announced as soon as next month.
No one involved is talking on the record, but the Financial Times reported Friday that NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp., Viacom, CBS Corp., Discovery and Walt Disney Co. are participating, as are advertisers Procter & Gamble, AT&T and Unilever and agencies GroupM and Starcom MediaVest Group.
TV networks, marketers and even viewers have long complained about Nielsen. And if the companies were swimming in cash, maybe there wouldn't be such urgency to find every last viewer who sees their shows and ads. But it sometimes seems as though all that will keep things from someday going bone dry are cold sweat and tears.
All media operations have been feeling squeezed lately, causing everyone to scrutinize all their numbers, not just costs and revenue but also audience figures.
In radio, there has been heated criticism of Arbitron's adoption of a new ratings system as some stations and formats have had seen dramatic changes in their audience estimates with the switch.
In print, publishers have looked to emphasize readership and the quality of market penetration rather than declining overall circulation, some of which has been intentionally pared to trim costs.
In all media, there have been efforts to track audience engagement in the belief such attentiveness increases the likelihood a marketer's message will connect, making the ads potentially more valuable.
Obviously, the proposed TV ratings coalition will raise anti-trust questions. But regulators may be swayed by the notion that these companies are banding together to provide a competitor to an even more monolithic enterprise in Nielsen, long the dominant TV ratings outfit, providing the audience estimates that are used to set ad rates.
Karen Gyimesi, a spokeswoman for Nielsen, said Friday that the company was declining to comment "on something that is not yet announced and speculative."
But Nielsen, which charges networks and advertisers, can't help but know networks think their reach is undercounted, and ad buyers would like more-detailed information on who exactly is seeing their commercials. A three-day glitch in May when Nielsen ratings were simply unavailable did not exactly boost confidence.
About $70 billion or so is spent annually on TV advertising in this country -- or at least has been, as some predict a double-digit drop, in part because of the economy -- so Nielsen's clients have reason to want to make sure they're getting the best data available and at the best available cost, especially with viewing and advertising shifting online.
Nielsen has launched an initiative to compile and provide viewership data across multiple platforms, but it is years from being fully operational. And there is a sense the coalition, which would solicit bids from outside firms (possibly including Nielsen) to track viewing of programming and advertising across all platforms, might also be years away from being useful.
"We're in a world where there's going to be a lot of competitive folks out there looking to get more precise analytics around audience measurement," Brian West, chief financial officer of The Nielsen Co., told analysts Thursday in a quarterly earnings conference call. "What we've tried to do, and what I think we've successfully done in terms of the asset side, is pull together what our clients are telling us they want most. [That] is a comprehensive three-screen measurement, indicating it's not good enough to be able to tell you a television audience measurement but also what that means to the online world and ultimately the mobile world.
"We think we're as competitive as anyone on that," West said. "But there are lots of folks out there that will always try to offer a very specific analytic in order to answer a very specific question. We also think in terms of set-top box analytics; we have initiative under way that make us competitive on that front as well. ... We think we're in a pretty good position to be able to be successful."
Historically, an obstacle to would-be competition with Nielsen has been the expense. But there are those likely to see the threat of a consortium as a worthwhile investment, if only to make Nielsen uncomfortable.
Twice in the last dozen years -- in 1997 and 2003 -- Nielsen ratings showed an inexplicably sharp decline in TV viewership among young men, who reappeared almost as abruptly as they vanished. Networks complained, but Nielsen never conceded an error of any kind.