Insight Into Nielsen

Many thanks to Rich at Copywrite Ink for his insight into Nielsen ratings.



"It’s not a great year to be Nielsen. Every time the company attempts to move forward with Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement — A2/M2 — someone is ready to stop them: clients, competition, consumers.

For Project Apollo, a three-year joint project with Arbitron to monitor buying and radio-television habits of 5,000 households, it was clients. They did not want to pay for the results. Consumers weren’t thrilled with the number of tasks they were asked to perform either. It’s not as cool to be a Nielsen family anymore.

Diane Mermigas, editor-at-large at MediaPost, recently called Nielsen the “about as inane an advertising value as can ever be justified” in her article about other initiatives to find effective measures. She’s not alone.

The differences between Nielsen ratings and other measures continue to grow, more and more shows are seeing 20 percent to 25 percent ratings gains when DVR viewing is calculated and some other are shows doubling their viewership online. It’s easier to get the numbers from TiVo or local cable companies that can count everyone.

Anyone who has a show facing cancellation (most recently, the show Moonlight) is continuing to send Nielsen a message — Nielsen might be confident in the rating system, but they are not. It’s a mounting public relations problem that Nielsen has yet to successfully address. For many consumers, Nielsen’s truncated research, not actual viewers, is the only reason their show was cancelled."

Jericho II

I recently posted about a report which stated that Nielsen had, once again, made a big error in their reporting.

According to MediaPost, "Nielsen also says it can’t keep up with the many new networks on satellite distributors: “Given the rapid growth and the increase in the number of packages and channels available, this process no longer provides the necessary level of reliability to accurately define household channel receivability.”

What? Nielsen admits they can't keep up? Is this supposed to make us trust them? How can they count Internet viewers when they can't even do it right for TV?

Read the entire article here.
************************

I look back at all the things, besides send nuts, during our first campaign and I find it amazing that some think fans can't do more than one thing at a time. Nobody said Nuts To Nielsen would save Jericho; it's just part of the big picture.

And, remember, the Nuts To Nielsen campaign may include everyone. It's not just for Jericho fans. Your show could be canceled next.

Send them here:

Shipping to:
The Nielsen Company
770 Broadway
New York, NY 10003-9595
United States
phone: +1 646 654 5000

IR Contact
David Berger: +1 646 654 5057
david.berger@nielsen.com


Tell them:

HEY NIELSEN, COUNT THIS!