- A Metrics Miracle in
Metrics Insider on
12/09/2016
Josh Chasin is a poet -- and he knows it -- with this twist on a seasonal classic:" 'Twas the week before Christmas, when alone in my house/ I was finishing shopping, with a click of the mouse;/Then
I cleared out my browser cache, cookies deleted,/ In hopes of nefarious snooping, defeated."
- Advertising Works -- And How! in
Metrics Insider on
11/04/2016
Sometimes I worry that we digital cognoscenti can get so lost in the magic and elegance of all these awesome algorithms and Big Data assets, that we forget to take a step back and ponder the bigger
picture: the actual people out there on the other side of all those myriad screens.
- Advertising Works -- And How! in
Metrics Insider on
04/01/2016
Sometimes I worry that we digital cognoscenti can get so lost in the magic and elegance of all these awesome algorithms and Big Data assets, that we forget to take a step back and ponder the bigger
picture: the actual people out there on the other side of all those myriad screens.
- Inside Today's Digital Household in
Metrics Insider on
02/05/2016
There was a time when understanding consumer use of the Internet was relatively simple - way more complex than understanding engagement with any other medium, sure, but still relatively simple. All we
needed to deal with was engagement from computers. There were no tablets, no smartphones, no OTT; your thermostat wasn't a connected device.
- A Metrics Miracle in
Metrics Insider on
12/22/2015
Josh Chasin is a poet -- and he knows it -- with this twist on a seasonal classic:" 'Twas the week before Christmas, when alone in my house/ I was finishing shopping, with a click of the mouse;/Then
I cleared out my browser cache, cookies deleted,/ In hopes of nefarious snooping, defeated."
- For Best Results: Big Data, Meet Media Research in
Data and Targeting Insider on
12/21/2015
I've been thinking a lot about the deployment of Big Data assets in the digital space. Clearly, it is one of the most profound developments in digital metrics - and indeed, in our lives. The Internet
of Things is already here; we can pay with our watches, and we've got Google thermostats. But in our space, I worry that there is too much emphasis placed on "Big Data," and not enough on "Good Data."
Perhaps here the data scientist can learn from the media researcher.
- Rethinking Traditional Audience Measurement Through A Digital Framework in
Metrics Insider on
12/11/2015
What would a video measurement system look like if one were to zero-base such a solution today, with the tools we have at hand, given the measurement challenges we face, while unencumbered by legacy
systems?
- Let's Not Forget: Digital Advertising Moves Products in
Metrics Insider on
11/11/2015
Lately it seems as if every article I read about digital advertising is about viewability, fraud, or ad blocking. "No one's seeing my ads!" "Robots are seeing my ads!" "Robots are blocking my ads!"
It's enough to make the casual reader think the sky was falling. I'm starting to think we're all collectively guilty of "burying the lede": that digital advertising works, persuades consumers, moves
products.
- Rethinking Traditional Audience Measurement Through A Digital Framework in
Metrics Insider on
10/22/2015
What would a video measurement system look like if one were to zero-base such a solution today, with the tools we have at hand, given the measurement challenges we face, while unencumbered by legacy
systems?
- Rethinking The Single Currency Model in
Metrics Insider on
10/16/2015
One of the long-standing assumptions in audience measurement has been the notion of currency - and more to the point, of a single currency. I learned about the one-currency model in a very real way
working at Arbitron in the '80s and '90s. We won one single-currency battle: spot radio measurement, where we competed with Birch Radio. And we lost one: spot TV, where we competed with Nielsen. But
I'd like to offer a radical opinion. In the digital age, multiple transactional media currencies can, do, and will continue to exist. Indeed, they need to exist.
- There Are No Shortcuts To Being Human
by
Gord Hotchkiss
(Media Insider on
09/09/2025)
Re this paragraph--When you know this and relisten to the songs, you swear you would’ve never been fooled. Those now in the know say the music is formulaic, derivative and uninspired. Yet many of us were taken in by this AI hoax, or what the real “band” now refers to itself as – “a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction and composed, voiced and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence.”--I daresay that the reason people were fooled so easily is that most "popular" music today is formulaic, derivative, and uninspired.
- CBS News Interview Policy Shift: More Transparency, More Trump?
by
Wayne Friedman
(TV Watch on
09/08/2025)
The obvious problem here is that a 20-minute interview might result in a 4-minute clip. Now the interviewer will have to figure out how to have the entire conversation in the 4 minutes.Stupid decision. Reserve the right to broadcast just the part of the interview that actully constitutes NEWS (after all, they don't call it "The Evening Recitation of Talking Points") but commit to posting the entire interview on your website. Transparency and crappy presentation of "the news" don't have to be paradoxical.
- Adalytics Asks Judge To Toss DoubleVerify Suit
by
Wendy Davis
(MediaDailyNews on
09/08/2025)
I'm not a lawyer, and I typically make this comment about people, not companies...But often, I find that people confuse the right to free speech, with the right to consequence-free speech.
- Calling Nielsen Viewing Audible? NFL Says Its Audience Is Bigger
by
Wayne Friedman
(TV Watch on
09/04/2025)
I watched a few "real football" games recently. I even saw someone score a goal!
- Calling Nielsen Viewing Audible? NFL Says Its Audience Is Bigger
by
Wayne Friedman
(TV Watch on
09/04/2025)
The process of personification-- turning HH-based measurement to persons-based-- incolves 2 components: demographic assignment and co-viewing. Really the other way around; how many are watching, and what are their demographics. While there has been some interest in the phenomenon of co-viewing from the perspective of, do ads work better if you see them with others in the room, this isn't a co-viewing question (although that's what it's being called.) This is a VPVH question. If 1 person is watching in the living room and another 1.4 are watching on other sets, the VPVH is still 2.4, and it is the VPVH that is in question here.The NFL is complaining about viewers, not co-viewing; they are hypothesizing that the shortfall they perceive is due to Nielsen undercounting VPVH. It doesn't matter if 3 people are watching the game on 3 different sets in the HH, that's 3 VPVH in that HH. And persons out of their own home are measured by PPM, which is a person-based, not a set-based metric, and will have no bearing on VPVH. The NFL's fundamental claim regarding the Super Bowl-- that VPVH of 2.4 seems low-- remains specious, because as I said, that's 96% of the HH's viewers. If they have a beef-- and I'm not saying they do or don't-- it would be in number of homes viewing, or OOH. An in-home VPVH of 2.4 is inarguably high.keep in mind that since I've been working in audience measurement (1980), we've always measured TV sets (with meters) and then endeavored to personify the HH-level viewing. When I started this was done with diary placemeent to calculate demographic VPVH, which were applied to the meter-baseed HH measureent. Then with people meters, the meter itself collected individual viewing data. I do not believe any atempt is made to turn the OOH PPM-measured viewing into HHs.If someone in a people meter HH is watching outside the home, there is no adjustment to in-home ratings to account for that. I'm sure that the NFL simply divided the total persons in-home rating by the total HH rating, to derive the 2.4.
- Calling Nielsen Viewing Audible? NFL Says Its Audience Is Bigger
by
Wayne Friedman
(TV Watch on
09/04/2025)
And I was afraid Tony Jarvis would catch wind of it.
- Calling Nielsen Viewing Audible? NFL Says Its Audience Is Bigger
by
Wayne Friedman
(TV Watch on
09/04/2025)
First off, I am right:https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/07/15/the-hurdles-nielsen-faced-with-measuring-out-of-home-television-viewing/Second, PPM households have a beacon that the PPM "reads" so it knows if the viewing is taking place in the panelist's own household (presence of beacon), or elsewhere (including someone else's home.) The criticism I've heard of PPM in a bar setting is that often the sound isn't on, or else can't compete with ambient noice, so the PPM panelist is watching the game but the PPM doesn't "know" it.When I designed the OOH measurement at VideoAmp, which was based on geolocation, we excluded it from total rating-- it was presented as a "side car" number for buyers and sellers to assess-- because I recognized that geolocation placing a viewer inproximity to a set was a differenrt definition of viewer than was traditionally the case.
- Calling Nielsen Viewing Audible? NFL Says Its Audience Is Bigger
by
Wayne Friedman
(TV Watch on
09/04/2025)
So here's the thing.The US census bureau reports that the average US household size is 2.51 persons. Not, as we've been told for years, 2 parents and 2.4 kids. So if Nielsen shows 2.4 viewers per viewing households-- or VPVH-- that means they're saying that (if HH size in Super Bowl-watching HHs is the same as in households overall) 95.6% of people in viewing households are watching the game. That seems pretty high. Not. lot of room for upside.Now, I know what you're thinking: Super Bowl watch parties.But, nuh uh. When Nielsen moved to using the PPM for out of home, they made a methodological change-- guest viewers, previously accounted for with people meter button-pushing-- are now no longer considered in-home viewing. This was necessary because otherwise, guest viewers would be double-counted-- once via the people meter, and once by the PPM (if a PPM panelist comes to your home, the PPM captures their viewing there, so you don't want to cwpture it again on the people meter.) Now, the NFL may have a fair beef about out-of-home viewing. That's a different (and highly contentious these days) topic. But since the slice of viewing comprised of viewing in a home not your own has shifted in Nielsen from counting as in-home to counting as out-of-home, I don't think the VPVH beef about the Super owl is fair.
- 3.know: A Conversation With Mix Modeling Pioneer Ed Dittus
by
Joe Mandese
(Media 3.0 on
08/25/2025)
I don't think Podunk is a PPM market.
- Jewish Stereotypes Get Animated In New Netflix Toon
by
Adam Buckman
(TVBlog on
08/22/2025)
This, I need? Another show I should watch?