• by Joe Mandese , April 12, 2005

It has tried newspapers. It has even tried television. Now, a year after it launched with heavy funding from News Corp., anti-Nielsen pressure group Don't Count Us Out is turning to the Internet. Members of the coalition Monday said they would launch a major Web strategy built around an online advertising campaign promoting a new "The Recommendation Watch" website. The online campaign, as well as a new spate of print ads running in media trade magazines, Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and minority publications "coast-to-coast" were created by Washington, DC, communication agency Glover Park Group.

Josh Lahey, campaign manager of DCUO, declined to say how much it would be spending on the new advertising effort, but described it as "stepping up." Last year, DCUO was estimated to spend more than $5 million on advertising and PR efforts, including a controversial direct mail campaign, aimed at disrupting Nielsen's rollout of people meters in local markets. Despite those efforts, and tremendous pressure from Capitol Hill that included a Congressional hearing, as well as an exhaustive task force investigation and a probe by the Federal Trade Commission, Nielsen has successfully deployed the meters in six local markets to date and plans to introduce them in two more this year.

Following the release of a report by the task force, Nielsen said it was committed to begin adopting many of its recommendations, noting that some of them required input from its clients. Nielsen already has announced plans to begin "coaching" and providing "performance-based" incentives to people living in minority households, which DCUO claims is underrepresented in Nielsen's local people meter samples.

But those steps apparently aren't good enough for the organization, which said its new website would focus on tracking how well Nielsen complies with the task force's recommendations.

It will be a "mechanism for the coalition and others that support us to keep an eye on the task force recommendations that were made," said Lahey, who said the Web effort would be in addition to an ongoing print, public relations and lobbying campaign that would keep the heat on Nielsen.

Ironically, some of the publications included in its ad plans are owned by VNU, which also owns Nielsen.