Is Nielsen finally about to give television executives what they’ve been demanding for years: a single measurement of live viewing across broadcast and digital platforms?
That’s the question posed by Variety‘s big cover story this week, penned by Digital Editor Todd Spangler.
In a not-too-flattering portrayal of the veteran media company “scrambling” to placate an industry that is seething over “money left on the table,” Spangler says the holy grail of integrated TV and digital numbers could finally be on the horizon in September 2014.
An announcement Spangler writes, is expected in the next week. The new number would combine live TV streamed through apps with the traditional number, and it would all be used in the final calculation for advertiser dollars.
At the same time, Nielsen is working on a digital-only rating that would measure shows streamed with online-only ads in the place of the broadcast ones. That program is expected to roll out in the first quarter of 2014.
Read more: Variety.
Brief take: The broadcast networks, in particular, still are mostly evaluated by next-day ratings, a measure that’s fast becoming irrelevant in a world populated by on-demand viewing, smart phones and tablets. Nielsen needs to crack the measurement code in order to more fairly rate television networks with advertisers, viewers and the press.
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