• by September 30, 2004

TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE NIELSEN WAY - Even when all the facts are clear and above board, truth always ends up being something of a subjective process. And don't even get us started about justice. As for Nielsen, let's get some of the facts clear. The company has always been a little cagey when it comes to the particulars of this thing or that one. It's routinely been that way with clients. Lately, it's even been that way with community groups and lawmakers. And now we can tell you first hand, it's clearly that way with the press.

We'll spare you the litany of examples that we've observed first hand over the years. If you want one recent example, just ask a member of the Association of National Advertiser's influential Television Committee what happened when Nielsen brass came in recently to brief them on how accessible minute-by-minute ratings data was. As it turns out, it was not -- accessible. And to its credit, Nielsen has finally sought to rectify that, informing clients this week that it would finally make the data available in October 2005, albeit for a tidy incremental sum.

Now, we of all people know that a fair amount of spin is a part of the game. But there's spin - a little nudging of the truth in this direction or that one - and then there's bald-faced lying. We've always considered Nielsen deft masters at the art of spin. Now they seem to have mastered a new art.

Perhaps it's because the company recently has had to fight such a bloodthirsty disinformation campaign of its own related to the facts surrounding its local people meter system. That's something the Riff has gone a long way toward correcting, even when many in the press were looking the other way.

But it seems all those high-powered spin-doctors, PR consultants, lobbyists, and communications gurus Nielsen has hired in recent months have had an impact. The company has gone from simply spinning and denying to outright lying.

In a "Media Advisory" distributed to the press on Wednesday and posted on Nielsen's Web site, the company accused MediaPost of "inaccurately" reporting a story about a Nielsen client briefing in which company executives discussed a plan to roll out portable people meters in 50 markets (markets 11 through 60, to be precise), pending a successful test by Arbitron and Nielsen in Houston and market support for the move. The advisory went on to state, "MediaPost did not confirm the story with Nielsen before publishing it." That's the lie.

MediaPost did call Nielsen to confirm the story two days before it was published. MediaPost also confirmed it with Arbitron, as well as several client executives who attended the meeting, who said they were surprised by the "aggressiveness" of the plan and the candor with which Nielsen executives disclosed it.

To be fair, the Nielsen and Arbitron spokesmen went out of their way to qualify that any rollout scenario was contingent on the results of the Houston test and client support. But that was not the real news. The real news was that up until that point, Nielsen had never acknowledged any rollout scenario for PPMs to its clients. The clients MediaPost spoke with thought that was pretty big news. And neither Nielsen, nor Arbitron denied it.

But enough about us. What does this mean for you? We think it must have something to do with the reasons why Nielsen is backpedaling on this story now. Perhaps it was a communication glitch. Perhaps it's the fact that Nielsen parent VNU on Wednesday announced a separate agreement with Arbitron to explore the development of a new national marketing panel that would utilize the portable people meters. And maybe the timing of the two stories confused some people at Nielsen.

More likely - and this is the really important part - Nielsen now regrets disclosing the PPM rollout plan while it is still trying to sell clients, the industry at large, community leaders, and lawmakers on the viability of its local people meter rollout in the top 10 markets. After all, if Nielsen thinks PPMs might be a good enough technology for markets 11 through 60, why wouldn't they be good enough for the top 10?

Ah, because it's not necessarily about the best research methodology, but about the best business model. Don't forget, Nielsen's local people meter rollout is a critical component of its plan to increase its national people meter sample from more than 5,000 today to about 10,000 households. If Nielsen was seen as publicly endorsing the PPM, it might cast dispersions on its commitment to the LPM, which could cause some key stakeholders to withhold support for the rollout plan, just when Nielsen appears to have regained the momentum.

Fine. But this ignores an even bigger question. And it's one that was raised by lawmakers during the recent Congressional hearings on the LPM. If the PPM is a potentially superior ratings methodology, then why would Nielsen be pushing ahead with LPMs before fully vetting the validity of PPMs? It's a great question. We think we've answered part of that already. Other parts are likely locked away in some hidden vault in Haarlem - that's the Netherlands, not uptown Manhattan.

To be sure, we understand that there is a need to further test the validity and impact of PPMs. There still are some major technical questions about the system, which relies on audio codes that have raised some new problems. For example, a PPM in one room can pick up the signal of a TV in another room. How do you credit that? Does it constitute "viewing"? If it's within earshot, should it be credited as an "ambient" TV experience?

These certainly are big questions. Another big question is what impact can PPMs have on the definition of advertising exposures? As planning guru Erwin Ephron notes, it could be a step backward from the current TV planning standard of "opportunity to see" to a "proxy for opportunity to hear."

That's a step backward at a time when many in the industry are pushing for higher orders of media measurement. Indeed, the ARF challenged the industry to do so a year ago when it introduced its new model for measuring advertising effectiveness. And by developing a single source measurement system that would simultaneously measure media exposure and product purchases, Arbitron and VNU are raising the bar on what many believe could be the ultimate measure of media effectiveness: return on investment.

But as Nielsen executives point out, none of that mitigates the need to have the most accurate methods in place for measuring media "currency." By currency, they mean the ratings points that are used by buyers and sellers to trade media time and space.

The real question is whether PPMs, for all their pitfalls, represent an appreciable improvement in the measurement process over the current people meter system. That's a point that could be argued to ad infinitum by technicians, researchers, advertisers, and the media. In fact, Canada, a relatively sophisticated media marketplace, has already gone through that process and recently introduced PPMs as the official currency in two of its biggest markets, Montreal and Quebec.

But maybe the biggest question of all is a philosophical one. One that is not about what's the best way to measure how people watched television in the past, but how they are watching now and will be watching it in the very near future.

The reality is that all media are becoming far more liquid and mobile and are increasingly being consumed in ways that no longer represent the electronic hearth. Already, people are experimenting with things like Internet bypassed television, streaming media, and other new avenues of digital TV distribution that will make the static world of Nielsen's TV set-based people meters completely irrelevant.

And the reality is that Nielsen's so-called "people" meters are really TV set meters that ask people to punch in when they believe they are watching TV. They are not meters that follow people around when and where they actually consume media. PPMs are. And isn't the goal of this really to measure what people are doing, not to preserve the status quo of an archaic TV ratings-based market structure?

Okay, so tell us we're naïve, but we believe Procter & Gamble ad chief Greg Ross when he says, "the consumer is the boss." What's the truth? We think that's the truth. So why doesn't Nielsen come out and say that. VNU already has.