• The Associated Press, Monday, July 7, 2008 12:15 PM

NBC is using the Olympics as a giant, billion-dollar research lab to learn how people use different media platforms to watch the games.

The research effort is designed to show advertisers how much consumers are paying attention to the programming, and reveal how people are supplementing TV viewership with video streaming, video on demand and mobile phone content. "I have no idea how people are going to use this stuff," says research chief Alan Wurtzel.

NBC will rely on Nielsen Media Research to count how many people are watching the Olympics on their home TVs and Quantcast to tally who is using NBC.com. For the rest of the audience, Wurtzel says NBC will use 10 methods involving outside companies and its own research staff. Information gathered by researchers could be used on the fly to set up Web site content and mobile phone content.

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