Blind advertisement.

[Chris]

At Thefutoncritic.com under their tracker sub menu it says that Nielsen Media Research is their source.
Now, if we look into how AC Nielsen does their rating research.

This is quoted off 2.4 TVNZ Market Position:


"Rating Details

In New Zealand audience share is usually measured by viewer ratings provided by the AC Nielson/AGB McNair

organisation which maintains the only people meter panel recognised by the advertising industry. This comprises 440

households selected to be representative of New Zealand’s population. The people meter is a monitor mounted on the

television remote control unit in each of these households that separately records the channel selection of each

member of the household. A channel must be watched for a minimum of eight minutes per quarter hour to be

registered. The channel selection is electronically downloaded to AGB McNair on a real-time basis. The demographics

and buying behaviour of this panel are also updated by periodic survey."

http://www.executive.govt.nz/96-99/minister/ryall/tvnz/description/index.htm

The following statement I found on a unlabeled, non-certified website.

"A. C. Nielson : selects a certain number of homes to represent the viewing habits in 60 million-plus American

households, places devices to record the television (if it’s on, what it is tuned in to), also asks people to

record diaries
- program rating: the number of sets tuned to a particular show in relation to the 60 million televsion households

in America."


http://members.nuri.net/yesunny/lec3-15.txt




Now, if you break this down it says clearly - if your friend, coworker, relative and so on does not have this

people meter mounted on their remote control, then it doesnt matter wheter he or she watches.
Therefore, doing mass advertisment blindly doesnt have the effect that you might think it has.
The ones you want to reach are the ones who reprensent the American people, meaning the ones with these people meters.

You may ask yourself, what is my point?
Well, I dont really have one, I'm simply creating awareness surrounding these viewer ratings.
There are rules and lots of documentation around the use of these people meters, as soon as I've got it edited and readable, I'll post them too.
Better understanding of the 'enemy' is a sure way to up your chances of victory.

Regards
Chris.

[Lance]

Chris, I understand about the meters the different companies use, and I agree that if a household doesn't have a meter it doesn't matter what's on. But if more people watch and the 'buzz' becomes a shout that cannot be ignored still more people not already hooked will wonder what the deal is. Ratings per se, it seems, are no longer a factor in the current season --- wide-spread awareness and interest are.

[Sxygrrl Huntress]

This has been mentioned before... the object of mass promotion is that eventually we'll find someone with the meters...

Like finding a needle in a haystack though. Unfortunately people with the meters aren't allowed to say they have them... So we have to blindly advertise and hope we come across the right people.

[Chris]

Mentioned before?
Dammit, I thought I had something new and exciting here..
Nevermind then.
hehe

Chris.

[Sxygrrl Huntress]

Chris, you're always exciting...

(and *no one* knows what Ashley says unless they were there, and *they* weren't... see other thread....) ;)

[Chris]

Erm, thats not 100% true. (oh yeah, now I'm going to be picky)
Today, with the audiovisual equitment available, you could easily prove a statement without being there first hand..

Eitherway, the other thread is open and ready for your input.

[Sxygrrl Huntress]

What's not 100% true? That you're not always exciting? ;)

Okay, brush me off to the other thread... nah, I say let that one die...

As for ratings, I'm now hoping X-Files fans have the meters because for the next 2 weeks, the actor from X-Files will be on BoP. This open up another area to promote to and there's alot of those fans around. Hopefully we'll catch some of them with a meter.

[Chris]

Well, if the word about a X-Files actor being on BoP then the ratings should go up considering the huge X-Files communities.
Time will tell eh..

[Sxygrrl Huntress]

It seemed to help with all the Lord Of The Rings promotions last week.... and yes, the X-Files communities are huge, and better yet, loyal. I'm sure alot of them will follow the actors to other shows.

Hmm... maybe I should tell them my Gillian Anderson story... a coworker of mine also manages a video store and he rented her the movie "Big" in October. But since he didn't recognize her and she didn't have a membership, he asked for photo ID and phone number. Realizes when he reads her name off the licence, who she was.

I could share that and then drop the info for them to watch BoP!

[Chris]

Whatever it takes!

meh, I dunno.
Do your thing and we'll see where we are in a month's time.

[Jesse321]

You would think that with all the technology available now a days, and most people having cable boxes in thier homes,that they could tap into cable boxes directly and circumvent the Neilson boxes. I think that that would give a MUCH broader perspective on what the country is watching rather than what just a select few are watching.

[tbey]

With all the spyware laws creeping up they may already have them ;) Did you carefully inspect your cable contract before signing it ? I know I didn't ;)

[MethyLBroMidE]

This was pulled off of Nielsenmedia.com.

It lists the 55 metropolitan "Areas" that comprise the survey for "Overnight" ratings.

All national data collected from outside of these "Areas" still make it into the "Final National" ratings. ("Fast" ratings are compiled for the top four networks only.)

Approximately 400 to 500 Nielsen meters (dunno if the meters are weighted by "Area") are scattered within each of these "Areas":

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rank-ID, Designated Market Area®, % of U.S.
"1 New York 6.83%"
2 Los Angeles 4.99%
3 Chicago 3.14%
4 Philadelphia 2.65%
5 San Francisco-Oak-San Jose 2.28%
6 Boston (Manchester)+ 2.21%
7 Dallas-Ft. Worth 2.06%
8 Washington, DC (Hagrstwn) 2.03%
9 Atlanta 1.85%
10 Detroit 1.78%
11 Houston 1.70%
12 Seattle-Tacoma 1.56%
13 Tampa-St. Pete (Sarasota) 1.52%
14 Minneapolis-St. Paul 1.50%
15 Cleveland-Akron (Canton) 1.43%
16 Phoenix 1.43%
17 Miami-Ft. Lauderdale 1.39%
18 Denver 1.28%
19 Sacramnto-Stktn-Modesto 1.15%
20 Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn 1.15%
21 Pittsburgh 1.09%
22 St. Louis 1.08%
23 Portland, OR 0.99%
24 Baltimore 0.99%
25 Indianapolis 0.96%
26 San Diego 0.94%
27 Hartford & New Haven 0.92%
28 Charlotte 0.90%
29 Raleigh-Durham (Fayetvlle) 0.87%
30 Nashville 0.83%
31 Milwaukee 0.81%
32 Cincinnati 0.80%
33 Kansas City 0.80%
34 Columbus, OH 0.78%
35 Greenvll-Spart,SC
-Ashevll,NC-Anderson, SC 0.74%
36 Salt Lake City 0.72%
37 San Antonio 0.67%
39 West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce 0.66%
40 Birmingham 0.65%
41 Norfolk-Portsmth-Newpt Nws 0.64%
42 New Orleans 0.62%
43 Memphis 0.61%
44 Buffalo 0.60%
45 Oklahoma City 0.60%
46 Greensboro-H.Point-W.Salem 0.59%
48 Providence-New Bedford 0.59%
49 Albuquerque-Santa Fe 0.58%
50 Louisville 0.57%
51 Jacksonville, Brunswick 0.55%
52 Las Vegas 0.55%
54 Austin 0.52%
58 Dayton 0.47%
59 Richmond-Petersburg 0.47%
63 Knoxville, TN 0.46%
70 Ft. Myers-Naples 0.39%

Total # of TV
Households in
Metered Markets 68.96%

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Note: There is a second batch of 5,000 meters scattered uniformly across the US. Data from these do not go into the "Overnights". Dunno much about the weekly diaries.)

[MethyLBroMidE]

NIELSEN DOES (NOW) COUNT VCR TAPINGS:

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=35685

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NIELSEN CAN NOW MONITOR TIVO
But Executives Ask: What Should Be Measured?
August 07, 2002
QwikFIND ID: AAN86M
By Hoag Levins and David Goetzl

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Nielsen Media Research has informed its clients that it can now monitor the TiVo personal video recorder (PVR) behavior of all 30,000 U.S. TV households it monitors.

However, a Nielsen spokeswoman pointed out that the immediate potential impact of this technological breakthrough is slight.

"When we go into a metered home, we connect our equipment to every piece of television or video equipment we find there," said Anne Elliot, vice president of marketing communications. "TiVO currently accounts for less than 1% of all our 30,000 metered samples."

Other PVR makers
TiVo is the only personal video recorder technology Nielsen can currently monitor, Ms. Elliot said. Nielsen is in talks with SonicBlue's ReplayTV and other companies that make similar PVRs with different proprietary systems.

Although it has announced the technological capabilities to monintor TiVo viewing behavior, Nielsen has not yet set a date for actually gathering or reporting such data to its clients. And the company notes that achieving a workable TiVo data-gathering interface is just the first step in the much larger process of building a comprehensive playback-based viewing reporting system.

'Cracked a big nut'
"We've cracked a big nut with TiVo, but we have quite a way to go," said Ms. Elliot, who explained that despite the low level of PVRs in use at present, their future proliferation raises revolutionary issues for the media-monitoring firm and its broadcast, cable TV, ad agency and marketer clients.

"Through all the 20 years we've been measuring cable," she said, "we've worked closely with set-top manufacturers, satellite services and others to develop workable monitoring systems, and we expect to do the same with this new technology.
What to capture?

"We have been discussing the next step with our clients," Ms. Elliot said, "because they need to define what they want reported. What exactly are we capturing from TiVo?

For instance, right now with traditional VCRs, we have automatically credited the program as it was recorded in the home. That amount of the VCR recording goes into our initial rating. But with TiVo we can capture everything it does but what really matters to the client? How about when an item is played back at some date in the future?"

For instance, if someone records Friends and watches it a week later, should that be added to the original ratings data for the episode or counted in some other fashion?

Ad zapping as a metric?
Adding some spice to the debate is TiVo's ability to zap comercials. Will zapping be monitored and reported as a new metric?

Mr. Elliot noted that ad zapping "will probably be a very high level interest to many of our clients" ad discussions proceed but she said the company had not yet determined how to handle such data.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------