In an effort to defuse mounting industry pressure for independent, third party research to make its TV ratings methods more accountable, Nielsen today will announce a plan to fund $2.5 million in methodological research on TV audience measurement. In a separate, but equally significant move, Nielsen will inform clients it is delaying measurement of digital video recorder (DVR) households until 2006. The two bombshells are part of a series of announcements that will set a new agenda for TV audience measurement into the foreseeable future. The moves come amid acute industry and governmental introspection of Nielsen's methods, as well as suggestions to either stimulate new competition for Nielsen or to create an independent industry consortium that would be responsible for overseeing improvements in TV audience measurement. That specific recommendation was made by the Media Rating Council in a letter to Congress and the Federal Trade Commission that was signed by more than 60 members, all leaders of research at major agencies and TV companies (MDN Jan. 31). The MRC, which was founded in the 1960s following Congressional hearings on TV audience measurement, has also been asking the government to clarify its role with regards to oversight of Nielsen. As part of today's announcements by Nielsen, the company, owned by Netherlands-based VNU, will extend an olive branch to the MRC, making a statement that reaffirms its commitment to the council and its auditing and accreditation procedures, well-placed executives tell MDN. The move to fund and have some direct input on an independent methodological research authority, however, would seem to circumvent the MRC's role in that process. In January, the MRC called on Congress and the FTC to endorse an industry-funded consortium whose main purpose would be to develop "better measurement techniques," something the TV industry has not had since the broadcast industry's Committee on Nationwide Television Audience Measurement (CONTAM) disbanded some years ago. While explicit details of Nielsen's overture were not known at presstime, MDN was told Nielsen would allocate $2.5 million to the effort and would contribute a half dozen of its own researchers to the team. The budget and the Nielsen researchers would work independently of internal Nielsen R&D efforts overseen by Chief Research Officer Paul Donato. While the DVR announcement is not directly related to the independent research initiative, it is also a significant move that is bound to generate strong, but mixed reactions from Nielsen customers. On the one hand, some customers - mainly TV companies whose ratings will be adversely affected by the inclusion of DVR households - will likely welcome he reprieve, which will give them more time to adjust their business models. On the other hand, Madison Avenue will likely fume over the move, which will only delay a more holistic picture of how people are actually watching TV today. When Nielsen originally unveiled plans to measure DVR households last year, penetration of the devices was estimated to be about 5 percent to 6 percent of U.S. TV households. By the time Nielsen begins installing meters in DVR homes in January of 2006, that penetration figure is expected to be well over 10 percent. "That's 10 percent of all households that will have been bypassed," says one Nielsen customer. It's unclear exactly what Nielsen's rationale is for the delay of DVR measurement, which was originally supposed to begin in spring of this year, but observers speculated it might either be due to technical reasons, or economic ones. One positive aspect of the delay, however, is that Nielsen will introduce DVR ratings in 2006 with a new element: same-day ratings of both live and DVR playback viewing. Previously, Nielsen had planned to only release same-day ratings for live viewing, followed by DVR playback ratings based on seven days of viewing.
The American Association of Advertising Agencies pulled the curtain up on its electronic data transfer hub--eBiz for Media--Wednesday, which will help conclude a two-decade crusade to find a service that allows the media industry's buy side and sell side to conduct "eBusiness transactions." The registry, at www.eBizformedia.com, is comprised of two parts: the Advertising Industry Registry and the XML Schema Repository. XML is the software transaction standard developed by the 4A's and MediaPort, a defunct venture sponsored by Interpublic, Omnicom, and WPP, and headed by media veteran Mike Lotito, who now runs his own media audit service, IQMedia. The registry will allow media buyers and sellers to locate other compatible trading partners, and then use the information in the registry to initiate pure "E2E" or "Machine-to-Machine" communication via Web services, said Greg Smith, the chief information officer of McCann WorldGroup. Smith is the head of the 4A's standards committee on electronic data interchange (EDI). The system is intended to provide a platform for transactions throughout the media life cycle, from avail to invoice. While other organizations such as the Television Advertising Bureau (TVB), Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, and National Cable Communications have worked on efforts to move the transaction process from manual to electronic over the years, eBiz for Media is designed to encompass all those other systems. "In broadcast local TV, for years, and the rep community have had [the TVB-developed] DARE system and that has worked very well," Smith said. "The TVB actually has two threads running: one is continuing to support DARE, which is a Donovan [software] system used to communicate to the reps, or open standards, which covers about two-thirds of the agencies that are not on the DARE systems." At a conference a few years ago when Smith was talking about moving forward on EDI, he recalled being interrupted by a woman who said: "I've been hearing about EDI for 14 years, and nothing's ever happened." The unveiling of eBiz for Media is intended to prove that something has happened. "We've overcome technology barriers and political barriers, and we're at a point where all parties have to do this in order to survive in many cases," Smith said. "Media companies need to push their respective software providers or their internal IT groups, and this will come to fruition--and in a short amount of time we will have electronic data flow. We've made much more progress in the last year than anyone could have dreamed." At the 4A's Media Conference in New Orleans next month, Smith said he will have more specific examples as to how the standards are being used and what sort of impact they're having on business.
The New York Times Co. announced yesterday that it intends to purchase About.com from magazine company Primedia Inc. for $410 million in cash. The deal could more than double the online reach of the Times Co., which currently draws 13 million monthly viewers to its 40-plus Web sites, including NYTimes.com and Boston.com. Around 22 million users a month visit About.com, a consumer information site; the acquisition will also give the Times additional advertising inventory. About.com was founded in 1996 as The Mining Co. by Scott Kurnit, an Internet pioneer who had been a top executive at MCI/News Corporation Internet Ventures and Prodigy Service Co. Kurnit's vision was to create a Web portal consisting of countless microsites produced by individual enthusiasts covering any topic an Internet user would want to access. Kurnit sold About.com to Primedia in 2001 for $690 million, one of the last of the big Internet acquisitions before the crash. Under Primedia's ownership, About.com was integrated with and linked to an array of sites operated by Primedia's array of niche magazines.
With video content on the Web still in short supply, marketers who want to stream video broadband ads are turning to "in-page" formats, in which video ads stream next to static text, or "transitional" formats, where ads stream between page views. But whether Web viewers interrupt their online reading to view this type of ad remains open to question. Now, in an attempt to answer that question, rich media advertising company Viewpoint and market research company Dynamic Logic will conduct an experiment involving 10 marketers who will advertise across 15 to 20 Web sites. For the study, Dynamic Logic will examine behavior and attitudes of online viewers exposed to the three types of ads: in-page, pre-roll (in which the ad precedes video content), and transitional (ads shown to consumers who are navigating from one page to another). Most ads will be re-purposed television spots and will last 30 seconds, said Allie Savarino, vice president of the New York-based Viewpoint, which completed its merger with Unicast on Jan. 3. Participating marketers include Hyundai, Microsoft Office, Newsweek, Pepsi, and 20th Century Fox; publishers include AOL and ESPN. The project begins on February 28, 2005 and ends in April. The study will look at effectiveness measures, such as whether respondents clicked on the ads. Respondents will also be surveyed about whether the ad affected their awareness of the brand or their intent to make a purchase. In addition to analyzing the impacts of different online ad formats, the study will attempt to compare brand awareness and purchase intent between viewers exposed to online ads with those exposed to television ads. But the methodology for such comparisons is still evolving. Savarino said that for this study, the researchers will compare viewers who saw an online ad with focus group members who saw television ads, and will ask survey respondents whether they saw an ad on television before seeing it online. If the answer is yes, they will ask the respondents to compare their reaction to the television ad with their reaction to the online ad.