NBC Stacks Up Olympic 'Exposure'

by Wayne Friedman, Jul 22, 2008, 7:30 AM

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BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. -- NBC's plan to measure the entire Beijing Olympics media usage will not exactly be familiar for TV advertisers.

For each day of the Olympics, NBC will be releasing total "exposures" for each program, which will include duplicated consumers/viewers across all its media platforms--traditional TV, cable, Internet, video on demand and mobile.

For instance, this might amount to a daily number of 58.7 million exposures--56 million TV exposures, 1.8 million on the Internet streams, 700,000 exposures on cable, 90,000 video on demand and 15,000 mobile. NBC calls this its Total Audience Measurement Index (TAMI).

Traditionally, TV advertisers have focused on non-duplicated viewers because marketers want to identify individuals who could buy their products and/or service.

"This is not Nielsen unduplicated cume, which has been a very standard measure of reach for 50 years," says Alan Wurtzel, NBC Universal's president of research and media development, at a press conference at the Television Critics Association meeting here.

"But I would argue in that 360 degree environment we care less about literal reach and care more about exposures," he added. "I don't know how many people are duplicating--but I hope they would. Because the whole idea is to have the Olympics touch people in various ways throughout the day."

Wurtzel says TAMI will consist of measurement from Nielsen Media Research (measuring TV), Rentrack (measuring VOD), Quantcast (measuring the Internet), and Omniture (measuring Web interaction).

"For the first time ever, we'll be able to have simultaneous Web use and demos," says Wurtzel, regarding the data from Quantcast. "Right now, demos [on the Internet] come a month later. That is of no use for the Olympics."

NBC is also doing a special panel of 8,500 people who will tell the network how they use NBC's Olympic media platforms. For advertisers, Wurtzel also said there will be Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Objective (ROO) data for marketers.

In addition, NBC will have a small panel of 40 or 50 people using the portable technology from Integrated Media Measurement, where selected Olympic users will carry a portable handheld device 24 hours a day that will pick up audio signals--TV, mobile, radio, and even the Internet.

NBC's Wurtzel also said the network will offer daily TAMI numbers for the shows that air in the fall.

For example, Wurtzel notes that for a "Heroes" episode in April 2007, some 15.9 million exposures were measured--12.9 million of which were network TV, 744,000 from Sci Fi Channel, 2.1 million from streaming Internet videos, 59,717 from iTunes downloads, and 2,165 from NBC's association with Intel's Viiv technology-based PCs, a media platform that Wurtzel said is being phased out.

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