Media congloms unite to challenge Nielsen (FT)

By Nancy Tartaglione

Networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp., Viacom, CBS, Discovery and Walt Disney have banded together in a consortium designed to challenge Nielsen, the dominant force in TV ratings measurement, The Financial Times reports.

People briefed on the plans told the FT that the consortium is likely to award contracts for measuring set-top box data and cross-platform viewers across TV and digital sources with a hope to be operational by September.

The group has brought in Procter & Gamble, AT&T; and Unilever to be involved in the project. The involvement of such big names shows just how much advertisers feel the need for better information to justify ads that run across multiple media platforms, the FT says. Media agencies GroupM and Starcom MediaVest are also involved.

The $70 billion spent on TV advertising each year is allocated according to viewer numbers so audience measurement is primordial. But, the explosion of multiple viewing platforms has made harnessing the numbers more difficult.

"The most deficient thing is there's no single source measurement [for TV and digital video]," Sam Armando, senior vice-president of audience analysis at Starcom Mediavest, told the Financial Times.

Nielsen measures the interaction of TV and Internet video viewing via a convergence panel of about 2,800 people, but these are not officially part of the national sample upon which ratings are based.

A full roll-out of that service is expected by 2011.