• by Frank S. Foster , June 6, 2008

One of the benefits of being a part of the MediaPost TV Board is the unending stream of mostly predictable, sometimes creative and occasionally poetic emails that come my way.  At the risk of triggering an avalanche of similarly themed communication, I share with you the following:

Dear Mr. Foster,

Thought you might like to know ... my neighbor is a Nielsen family.  How did I find out?  He bragged to me that he and his family were gaming the television industry.  He invited me over to his house and he showed me his equipment.  I saw the people meters.  I saw the two televisions he "hid" from Nielsen during the installation.  'For when we want to watch stuff we don't want Nielsen to know we watch,' he confided.  

My point in writing you is this.  He and his family watch the majority of their shows on the two TVs that are not monitored.  Should I report him to Nielsen?  Based on what I've read, I don't know if that will do much good.  Suggestions?

--Nielsen Neighbor


I've received numerous emails from people claiming they were once Nielsen families; three people have emailed me claiming to be currently enrolled Nielsen panelists.  All admitted to some form of petty dishonesty, misrepresentation or manipulation.  But this particular email appeared to be different.  Here was a panelist that, allegedly, wanted to stick it to the Man.  Now that was someone I wanted to meet.  So I did.  Sort of.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Why is this issue important?  It is not because Nielsen fails to do everything in its considerable power to prevent this sort of behavior. I think they do.  The problem lies in the fact that Nielsen fails to acknowledge the way society has changed in the last 60 years.  In my grandfather's day, when Arthur Nielsen conceived of his approach to ratings, times were simpler.  Not only were there fewer media options, but people were apt to comply with Nielsen's requirements.  

We no longer live in such a world.  "Participate in a Nielsen panel?  What's in it for me?" appears to be a much bigger problem than ever.  We have access to wildly popular services such as ebay Motors, priceline.com, and froogle.com to help us from getting "taken" when we purchase cars, travel and everyday items.  Grifters are not the only members of society attempting to game the economic system.  Gaming runs through the veins of society.

While one would expect market forces or even evolution to reduce the influence of such gaming behavior, the opposite is occurring.  Instead of monitoring the television viewing habits of one family, the grocery store purchases made by a second family and the Internet traffic of a third, Nielsen would like to track multiple activities of the same people, allowing it to determine when someone saw an ad and then bought the product.  To quote Nielsen's James M. O'Hara, "I'm going to go to a home and say, 'I want your TV, I want your Internet, here's a cellphone you're going to use and, by the way, I want to measure your grocery purchases.'  That's a lot."  Anyone want to volunteer?  I would surmise that to most prospective panelists, the privacy concerns would outweigh any potential monetary windfall.  But those that do volunteer are arguably much less representative of a population than they ever have been.  I would argue they are much more likely to cheat too.  If "Bob" is any indication, it is worse than I had ever imagined.

I spoke with Bob via email.  He used a disposable email address which I received from the neighbor who contacted me.  An excerpt of our exchange follows:

Q:     It sounds like you are trying to corrupt Nielsen's examination of your television viewing?
A:      That's because I am.
Q:     What motivates you to do that?
A:      I could tell you it is because they don't pay me enough.  I could tell you that I find their constant calls and emails bothersome.  But the truth is we do it because it's fun to mess with them.
Q:     Could you elaborate?
A:     There attempts to monitor my viewing are juvenile.  What I do only helps their competition.
Q:     What do you mean?
A:     Nielsen's competitors must produce better products.  I mean what they collect from me is awful.
Q:     Who else provides television ratings?
A:      Arbitron?  Google?  I am sure there are others.
Q:     Would you be surprised to learn no one else provides television ratings?
A:      Really?  That's hilarious.  Well then, I guess I am going to have to up the ante.
Q:      I hear from your neighbor you actively try to send Nielsen false data.  Do you do anything else?
A:      Yeah.  There is a group of us Nielsen families and we decide to watch weird shows together.
Q:  I don't follow you.
A:      We decide what we are going to watch and then make sure the TVs are on when the show airs.  
Q:      Coordinated, false viewing?
A:     Yep.  Great isn't it.
Q:      Where did you meet these other Nielsen families?  
A:      On the internet, in social sites.  I don't really know if everyone is a Nielsen family, but I know that I am.  Most of the people seem to know a lot about the equipment I have in my house.  So it appears that they have at least seen the stuff somewhere.  Cool, huh?

Don't get me wrong, I understand that Nielsen does a great sales job and touts that being part of a "Nielsen household" should be a point of pride for the people who participate in the company's Big Brother campaign. In exchange for some form of compensation, these households know that their personal choices influence what comes out of Hollywood and which programs Madison Avenue agencies covet.  There is nothing new about that.  But the extent to which Nielsen can police alleged behavior like Bob's, and more importantly gauge the effect it has on its research, is difficult to ascertain.  

Panels are subjective.  Panels are problematic.  Panels are difficult to manage.   Panels should be a small but important part of a solution -- not the only solution.  "Gaming" research based on a census is impossible.  Behavior is behavior.  But when one person's false behavior is attributed to that of 10,000 or even 30,000 others -- that's a problem.  And it is a problem inherent to a small sample.

And gaming is only going to become more insidious and difficult to monitor as Nielsen moves forward.  Suppose a recruiter finds someone (anyone) willing to provide more than just television viewing -- Web surfing, purchasing behavior, cell phone usage -- how much is too much?   Wait until someone like Bob realizes he is in a coveted demo.  Wait until Bob finds out his behavior is being used to direct the advertising strategy of multibillion-dollar advertising campaigns.  And Bob's behavior is weighted 3X.  Think Bob will figure out he can SELL his habits to the highest bidder?  Think I am joking?  Go hit the social sites.  You can buy anything.

Then again, we could just ignore the issue.  That's undoubtedly the easiest solution.    As P.T. Barnum's nemesis David Hannum uttered over 100 years ago  (In reference to the Cardiff Giant Hoax, New York City 1870),  "There's a sucker born every minute. "