Nielsen and Integrated Media Measurement Launch Out-of-Home TV Ratings Measurement

Service provides industry’s first ongoing audience estimates of television viewing in offices, fitness clubs, hotels, bars and other out-of-home locations

New York, NY and San Mateo, CA, April 12, 2007 – The Nielsen Company and Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), the developer of an integrated media measurement system, today announced a co-branded service that will provide all-electronic metrics on television viewing that occurs outside of the home. The new service is expected to launch in September 2007.

This service will mark the first time Nielsen will offer ongoing audience estimates of television viewing in out-of-home locations such as offices, fitness clubs, hotels and bars.

...

The new out-of-home measurement service builds on Nielsen’s Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement (A2/M2) initiative, which seeks to measure television viewing on every platform where it is available. It will be offered to clients as a stand-alone service, and will be separate from Nielsen’s current in-home, national and local television ratings services.

Sample participants will be asked to carry mobile phones that include metering technology developed by IMMI. The phones will collect passive digital signatures from television telecasts that IMMI will match with audio signatures collected by IMMI from actual telecasts. The signatures will be transmitted to IMMI computer servers for reporting.

Read the text of the full release at Nielsen.com

See Nielsen description of A2/M2 (Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement) System

See previous PPM News Posts about A2/M2 here and here

Nielsen to Get Off Sofa, Into Bars and Gyms

Nielsen to use Cell Phone Device to Track Out of Home Viewing

Beginning in September, Nielsen will release national ratings for television viewing outside the home in places like bars, hotels, gyms and offices, the company announced today. For decades, Nielsen has rated television viewing based only on what viewers in its panel watch while they are home. The moment those viewers traveled or went to the gym, however, any television they watched was not recorded.

...

The ratings will be calculated using cellphone tracking devices that recognize programs by sounds. The cellphone will be provided free to 4,700 participants, who will be paid a small fee each month. The participants pay their own cellphone bills. Integrated Media Measurement has recruited 3,000 people who are in six cities — New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Denver and Houston — and Nielsen will recruit 1,700 others, aiming for them to be demographically representative.  [ MORE ]

Media Week: Nielsen's DigitalPlus Could Trigger Lawsuit

The Nielsen Company's plans to launch Nielsen DigitalPlus, a service that will mine TV-viewing data from digital set-top boxes, could trigger a new lawsuit from would-be TV ratings competitor erinMedia. The timing of Nielsen's announcement, on Monday, comes just days before erinMedia is set to close Friday on a $25 million investment from Spark Capital.

Frank Maggio, the founder of erinMedia, now believes that deal, and his ability to form a coalition of support from several companies in the media and advertising industry, is in jeopardy. “[Nielsen’s announcement] was designed to interfere with my ability to close a $25 million funding round with investors. They’re trying to squash our ability to move forward at a very critical time,” Maggio said.  [ MORE ]

The Hollywood Reporter: Nielsen, DirecTV interacting

NEW YORK -- The Nielsen Co. and DirecTV Group Inc. have agreed to test new metrics to measure the daily viewing behavior of interactive television subscribers, the companies said Wednesday.

To test the new system, Nielsen will use aggregated and anonymous data from a panel of 300,000 DirecTV interactive customers.  [ MORE ]

MediaDaily: Nielsen Foe Uncovers 'Holy Grail,' It's Called Remo

OF THE MANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES that have attracted Spark Capital and a group of potential strategic partners to fledgling ratings firm erinMedia one is a patent for a new technology that has the potential for transforming not just media audience measurement, but the integration of media exposure and product usage data that some have long described as the "Holy Grail" of marketing and media research. The patent, which is still pending in the U.S. and key international markets, is the heart of a sophisticated TV remote control that would enable marketers and agencies to track what people were doing with their TV sets, as well as other media and, perhaps most importantly, what consumer products they buy.

...

But a glance at the formidable patent filing, nearly 47,000 words in all, offers a picture of a device that could do just about anything a marketer, an agency or a media company might want to know about a subscriber who chose to interact with it.   [ MORE ]

Arbitron and Nielsen Formalize Project Apollo

Arbitron and The Nielsen Company Sign Agreement and Form Jointly-Owned Limited Liability Company to Continue Development of 'Project Apollo' Marketing Research Service

Proposed service would link the Arbitron Portable People Meter system with ACNeilsen Homescan Technology

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 1, 2007—Arbitron Inc. (NYSE:ARB) and The Nielsen Company announced today that they have signed an agreement that will govern completion of development and testing of the ‘Project Apollo’ marketing research service and the expansion of the pilot panel to a full national service if the test results meet expectations and generate marketplace support. The parties have formed a jointly-owned limited liability company to continue pursuit of the project.

The proposed ‘Project Apollo’ service would use the Arbitron Portable People Meter^TM system, ACNielsen Homescan technology and other technologies to provide advertisers with a better understanding of the connection between consumer exposure to advertising on multiple media and their shopping/purchase behavior.

“By making it possible to link the Arbitron Portable People Meter system with ACNielsen Homescan technology, this agreement between Arbitron and The Nielsen Company will help make real the industry’s long standing dream of a true, ‘single-source’ consumer research service,” said Steve Morris, president and chief executive officer, Arbitron Inc.

Full Text of Press Release at Arbitron.com

Stories posted at:

    Media Buyer Planner

    Hollywood Reporter

    Brandweek Magazine

    Television Week

    Broadcasting & Cable

    FMQB

AdAge: Nielsen to Release Commercial-Minute Data in May

Report to Include Broadcast, Cable and Syndication

There's good news and bad news in Nielsen Media Research's updated plan for releasing commercial-minute data. The good news is the measurement company has decided to include all parts of the TV universe in its average-commercial-minute product. The bad news is the data won't be available until after the broadcast upfront presentations in May.

The new, easy-to-use average-commercial-minute data file will be released for broadcast networks, cable and syndication on May 31. That decision alleviates some fears the data would be released in piecemeal fashion, with Nielsen clients having to wait for substantial issues to be cleared up for cable and syndication.

The timeline makes it almost certain that the average-commercial-minute product will not become the new industry currency during this upfront. Agencies generally need around three months to analyze data and make full-year projections.  [ MORE ]

Media Planning Mindset

While the radio industry is having a discussion about whether or not it can or will embrace a passive measurement system like PPM, brand managers, marketers and agencies are having conversations that sound much like this article from Mark Green posted this week on MediaPost.  The radio industry should be digging into understanding this new system and how to use it to illustrate the accountability of this medium in the highly targeted, results-oriented, accountable world that is marketing today.

Targeting: From Seeing to Believing

Almost 40 years ago, the media community started negotiating television deals on gross ratings points for persons instead of households. Ten years ago, some intrepid buyers started to include the importance of unduplicated rating points, commonly called reach, in their negotiations. More recently, a few buyers began to target consumer ratings instead of demographic ratings.

The tools for this next step are still evolving through fusion and related technologies that connect consumption studies with media measurement tracking data. On the side, a whole business of marketing mix modeling has grown up to provide direction on which marketing techniques are driving short-term incremental sales. VNU/Arbitron's much discussed single-source Apollo pilot might become the centralizing force. It is meant to provide marketing, media, and purchasing observations in a single source, driving strategy and tactics for targeting and execution in real time without the fog and complexity of probability models.  [ MORE ]

After reading the full article, how many of our current sellers could we send in to have a conversation at this level - and with which tools would we prepare them?  MSO

PVRWire: Minute by Minute Ratings for TV

Nielsen to launch commercial ratings

After several false starts, it looks like Nielsen is finally getting ready to roll out minute-by-minute ratings data in April, including, for the first time, commercial ratings.

Apparently network execs aren't thrilled with the April 24th date set by Nielsen, because it doesn't give them much time to analyze the data before the May upfront period. That's when they announce shows fro the upcoming season and begin negotiations for commercial rates.

MarketingDaily: Nielsen In-Store Will Measure Retail Media

VNU AND THE IN-STORE MARKETING Institute announced yesterday that they will form Nielsen In-Store, designed to measure how customers react to point-of-purchase media, including television and radio, shelf talkers, and digital signage.

The new service will build on P.R.I.S.M. (Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric), a research effort led by the In-Store Marketing Institute early this year in conjunction with marketers 3M, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Miller Brewing, Procter & Gamble and The Walt Disney Company, as well as retailers Albertsons, Kroger, Walgreens and Wal-Mart.

[ MORE ]