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Twitter Data Can Provide Early Insights Into TV Ratings: Study

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Wednesday March 20, 2013 @ 7:38am PDTTags: Nielsen, TV Ratings, Twitter

About 32M people in the U.S. tweeted about TV shows last year. And a study out this morning from Nielsen and SocialGuide says that programmers should pay attention: The seemingly random messages Twitter users generate can provide a statistically meaningful early warning about whether a show is catching on. “We expected to see a correlation between Twitter and TV ratings, but this study quantifies the strength of that relationship,” says Andrew Somosi, CEO of SocialGuide, which is co-owned by Nielsen and McKinsey and monitors the links between social media and TV. For example, the firms saw a pattern for shows that had been on at least one season. Ratings for the premiere episode vs the previous season tended to be 1% higher among 18- to 34-year-olds when their tweets about the show were up 8.5%. Similarly, premiere ratings for 35- to 49-year-olds rose 1% when their tweets were +14%. READ MORE »

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Nielsen Reports Sharp Growth In “Zero TV” Households

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday March 11, 2013 @ 8:18am PDTTags: Netflix, Nielsen, TV Ratings

The data in Nielsen‘s latest quarterly Cross-Platform Report, out today, provides a little texture to the debate over whether the pay TV ecosystem will soon begin to crumble as consumers either cut the cord, or young people don’t subscribe when they set out on their own. The ratings agency says it’s going to start including data in its measured samples from homes where people watch lots of video, but not in a way that fits the traditional definition of a TV household — one where people watch broadcast or pay TV programming on a TV set. Turns out there are more than 5M so-called “zero TV” homes now, up from from more than 2M in 2007. Nielsen’s term for the group is a little deceptive: 75% have at least one TV set. But 37% watch video content on computers, 8% on smartphones, and 6% on tablets. A little less than half (48%) watch TV content through subscription services, which Nielsen doesn’t identify but I’d assume includes a lot of Netflix customers. As you might imagine, people in these “zero TV” homes tend to be a lot younger than others in traditional TV households, and 41.2% live alone (vs. 26.2% of people in TV households). Some 36% of “zero TV” people say that cost is the main reason why they opt out of the traditional system, while 31% say that they simply lack interest. But 18% say that they’d consider subscribing to pay TV. Read More »

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Disney Picks Nielsen To Guarantee Online Ratings For ABC, ESPN, and ABC Family

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Tuesday March 5, 2013 @ 7:43am PSTTags: ABC, ABC Family, Disney, ESPN, Nielsen

NEW YORK — March 5, 2013 — ABC, ABC Family and ESPN have adopted Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings to manage demographic guarantees for online video campaigns. Each network is using Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings audience composition data in conjunction with total delivered impression counts from ad servers to calculate viewer demographics.

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Nielsen Ratings To Add TV Watching Via Broadband

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday February 21, 2013 @ 4:29pm PSTTags: Internet TV, Nielsen

Nielsen will begin measuring viewers who watch TV programming via broadband Internet connection, the company confirmed today. Long criticized by broadcast TV networks for what they believe is significant viewership that regular ratings miss or exclude, Nielsen said its research … Read More »

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About 99% Of Viewers Watch TV Shows Within 7 Days: Nielsen

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday January 14, 2013 @ 9:41am PSTTags: Nielsen

This is the first time that Nielsen has looked at how many people use their DVRs or VOD to watch TV shows more than a week after they first run — and it’s easy to see why. Only a … Read More »

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Nielsen Agrees To Buy Arbitron For $1.26B

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday December 18, 2012 @ 4:40am PSTTags: Big Deals TV, Nielsen

Arbitron shares are up 25% in pre-market trading after Nielsen Holdings said it would buy the rival ratings company best known for its measurement of radio audiences. Nielsen said it will pay $48 a share, a 26% premium over yesterday’s closing price, for a total of $1.26B. ”Arbitron will help Nielsen better solve for unmeasured areas of media consumption, including streaming audio and out-of-home,” Nielsen CEO David Calhoun says. “The high level of engagement with radio and TV among rapidly growing multicultural audiences makes this central to Nielsen’s priorities.” His company also says it will expand Arbitron’s “Watch” segment’s audience measurement across screens and forms of listening. “These integrated, innovative capabilities will enable broader measurement of consumer media behavior in more markets around the world,” Nielsen President of Global Media Products and Advertiser Solutions Steve Hasker says.

The timing of the announcement is surprising: Last week, Arbitron said that Sean Creamer would become CEO on January 1 when the current chief, William Kerr, retires. Arbitron shares have appreciated 7.4% over the last 12 months.

Here’s today’s release: Read More »

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Nielsen Won’t Report November Ratings For Hurricane-Hit NYC, Complicating Billions In Ad Buys: Report

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday November 13, 2012 @ 8:20am PSTTags: Hurricane Sandy, Nielsen, TV Ratings

UPDATE, 11:24 AM: Nielsen confirmed that it has “made a decision not to release November 2012 data for NY” due to Hurricane Sandy, which knocked out too many households in its survey. It also says, in a statement, that it will “continue to evaluate other markets” and “will provide an update on any days that will be excluded.” Nielsen will announce before the November survey period’s over how it plans to handle markets where people use diaries to report their viewing choices. Meanwhile it’s evaluating Local People Meter results for Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia, but expects to announce by next week that some days will be excluded from the November report. The company adds that while the number of homes in its Local Metered Samples and the National People Meter Sample were “lower than normal,” the survey for the national results “passed its established threshold.” Nielsen will examine the results to identify “any geographic distortion.” Read More »

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Nielsen Unveils Ratings Service That Includes Web Video Views

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday October 1, 2012 @ 8:55am PDTTags: Nielsen, Nielsen ratings

The ratings company made this eagerly awaited announcement as ad executives converge on New York for Advertising Week, a dizzying collection of meetings and seminars for the industry. Nielsen’s new service is sure to create some buzz. Many TV … Read More »

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Internet Video Contributes To Second Straight Decline In TV Households

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday September 7, 2012 @ 2:21pm PDTTags: Nielsen, Ratings

Keep this in mind during the upcoming TV season when you compare the audience size for a network or show to its performance last season. Nielsen says that the TV universe now consists of 114.2M households, down 475,620 from last … Read More »

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Nielsen: Cable Loses 2.9M Subscribers As 1.5M U.S. Households Cut Cord In 2011

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Saturday May 5, 2012 @ 2:36pm PDTTags: AT&T U-Verse, Cable, Nielsen, Verizon FiOS

For all the talk about cord-cutting in the digital era, movement in that direction is relatively slow, as many viewers switch from cable to satellite or telepone providers rather than drop multichannel service altogether. Nielsen reports that 98% of viewing remained on traditional TV in Q4 2011. Cable lost more than 2.9 million subscribers as viewers switched to telephone or satellite providers. U.S. homes subscribing to cable, satellite or telephone providers for their TV service declined 1.5% or about 1.5 million last year, according to figures Nielsen released this week. Subscribers adding telco (about 1.9 million) or satellite service (roughly 280K) weren’t enough to make up the difference.
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Nielsen And comScore Settle Digital Measurement Patent Suits

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Wednesday December 21, 2011 @ 7:15am PSTTags: comScore, Nielsen

Digital ad buyers and sellers can relax: Nielsen and comScore will continue to provide their measurements showing how many people view different websites — a key part of the process to determine how much ads cost. Nielsen was given $19M … Read More »

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Nielsen Admits Mistake In Kids Viewership Data But Stands Behind Nickelodeon Ratings

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Monday December 5, 2011 @ 8:48am PSTTags: Cable Ratings, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Nielsen, Philippe Dauman, Viacom

Here’s some more anti-Nielsen fodder for Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman today at his UBS Global Media & Communications Conference appearance: The TV ratings company is admitting that it made a mistake when estimating the number of kids who are watching … Read More »

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