Nielsen Plans to Launch Cross-Platform Metrics in September
Are we finally going to get audience measurement that analyzes broadcast, mobile, and PC viewing in a single metric? At today's 2nd Screen Summit, Nielsen senior vice president Scott Brown talked about his company's embrace of census measurements, as opposed to its traditional panel-based approach, as a way of evaluating audience size and engagement on smartphones and tablets. Nielsen will supply an SDK that will let content owners apply watermarks inside ID3 tags to their programming, whether that programming originates on broadcast or digital, and whether it's delivered in-app or in-browser.
In part, Nielsen is doing this so that it can measure viewing from four days after a piece of content's original delivery; current measurement only covers this first 75 hours after the initial delivery. The end result is that digital campaigns and content will be measured along with broadcast, and without today's time constraints.
It's not going to be easy, said Brown, since all content providers will need to install that SDK so that viewership can be measured. Still, Nielsen has been briefing content providers and trying to earn buy-in, and is planning a September 2014 launch with this new capability, subject to ad model provisions, Brown said.
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