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June 15, 2006
Shiny, Happy People Meters
Nielsen's announcement yesterday that it would go all-digital, and use new people meters to track media wherever watched/listened-to, from cellphones to iPods to, yes, TVs, is shaking a lot of people up. It represents an important step away from downloads as media tracking, and back again to viewership, which is really the measure. I know I download many things that I never get around to watching, and then there are other things that get played many times.In particular, the out-of-home viewing addition is important, with not just cellphones being included, but also long-overlooked things like doctors' offices, bars, campuses, and so on. The resulting data will be fascinating to watch, and could really twist the media biz in knots.
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It's nice to say that they're going to track what people are watching and listening to but how do they expect to go about this? When I was younger I figured all tvs had a tracking signal in them that told Nielsen what you were watching. Then I started wondering what happened when you turned your tv off but not your vcr. Did Nielsen think I was watching the same channel all night long? Then I looked into it and it turned out that you needed to sign up to be tracked. I haven't trusted ratings since and will trust them even less now.
How are they going to figure out what I listen to in my car? What about at work? If they use surveys to sample the population, since this is in the US, how many people are going to admit to downloading music off p2p networks since it's illegal there?
It just doesn't seem feasible to get realistic numbers.