Nielsen

Arthur C. Nielsen Jr., who transformed the company his father founded in 1923 into an international leader in market research, helping to make its name synonymous with television ratings, died on Monday in Winnetka, Ill., where he lived most of his life. He was 92.

Nielsen’s James Russo says in the current economic climate, consumers are uncertain and reluctant to spend. But some groups are making purchases, just very pragmatically. This means, he says, that opportunities are there, but marketers have to drill a little deeper and understand the dynamics of the marketplace. TV is still the No. 1 medium, with its reach and frequency. But consumers are simultaneously using social media to discuss their purchasing decision. TV had better get in on the conversation.

Over the past five years, sports programming has climbed sharply among U.S. viewers — with reality TV programming maintaining its position at the most dominant TV genre, according to a Nielsen report. Reality’s share of U.S. TV viewing is 56.4% for the 2010-2011 season. Sports programming commanded 20% of the 187 million U.S. viewers ages 2 years and older.

A week after unveiling an aggressive plan to convince the ad industry to use its new Facebook panel as the “GRP” for online advertising and media buys, Nielsen Wednesday began informing clients about a major snafu with the one that generates GRPs for the multibillion television advertising marketplace. Some agency executives already believe it could lead to big problems with their TV audience guarantees that could result in millions of dollars in “makegoods” from television networks.

Over the past 10 years, DVR, online streaming, digital cable, video on-demand and increased programming options have fundamentally changed the way Americans watch television. Yet, the audience size for broadcast primetime remains strong at just shy of 200 million viewers. What has changed, however, is the makeup of the programming in the popular 8-11 p.m. time block, according to Nielsen’s analysis of the top 10 primetime broadcast TV shows.

Bruce Goerlich joined Rentrak two years ago after a quarter century poring over Nielsen data and spinning it into advice about what shows to buy and demographics to target. Now, as the chief research officer at Rentrak, the upstart TV measurement entity, he prefers to go with vague references about the giant, entrenched competitor. Last week, he used terms such as the “other folks,” “other guys” and “another company.” Other times, he used the euphemism “sample currency,” referring to Nielsen and its process of gathering a panel of viewers and making ratings projections.

The measurement firm’s Steve Hasker says it’s increasingly important that audience measurements keep up with the changes in media as viewers migrate to other platforms.

Nearly 42% of American adults who have televisions are watching them between 9:15 and 9:30 at night, the highest percentage of the evening and almost certainly all day.

As social media like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube grow increasingly popular among consumers, marketers are seeking more data about the changing behavior of their customers. The Nielsen Co., which has long provided such information about the traditional media, is seeking to become a go-to source of data for new media, too. To help bolster that, Nielsen is to release this morning a report of a kind it says it has not published before, a big-picture look at social media.

Nielsen said its new Online Campaign Ratings service — which looks to bring TV-style measurement to online advertising, including video — has received a stamp of approval from the Media Rating Council. Tabbed Online Campaign Ratings, Disney networks, Facebook, GroupM and Starcom MediaVest are among the clients using it. The system — which been in test for some time and was announced in September 2010 — hit the market Aug. 15, meaning that MRC accreditation largely parallels the launch.

Nielsen’s TV measurement service in Puerto Rico has received accreditation by the Media Rating Council following its April 2010 launch. Nielsen said the three principal stations in the U.S. territory and some agencies solicited it to launch a ratings service two years ago.

In a project still in the “R&D stage,” Nielsen has begun to measure cable television subscriber viewing habits on Apple’s iPad tablet for Time Warner Cable and Cablevision. Two undisclosed media companies are working with Nielsen to measure iPad viewership.

Natan Edelsburg: “It almost seems comical that it has taken Nielsen this long to attempt to judge the Internet the same way that television is judged. This new measurement tool might provide advertisers spending online the reassurance they need to shift budgets to the digital world.”

Bill Livek, the soft-spoken CEO of Rentrak exudes calm and generally eschews controversy, even as he leads an upstart business mounting a challenge to entrenched market dominator Nielsen. But Livek showed a bit of his fire within on a call with investors. Some of them were concerned that a new Nielsen deal with Kantar could pose a significant threat to Rentrak’s business — which is rooted in set-top-box data. Livek wasn’t content to just downplay the value. He tried to poke holes in Nielsen’s plans and suggested with some bite that it is copying Rentrak.

David Poltrack, chief research officer of CBS Corp. and president of CBS Vision, announced at the Television Critics Association meeting that the network has developed a special new survey co-produced with The Nielsen Company that reveals more complex and valuable audience segments and their ratings performances.

As Hulu and Netflix continue to square off, it’s important to note key behavioral differences between their respective audiences. According to new research from Nielsen, the vast majority of Hulu viewers get their video fixes via computer, while far fewer Netflix users rely on their “small screens.”

Looking for greater access to valuable set-top box data for its local TV research products, Nielsen has made a multi-year deal with Kantar Media for its consumer viewing data from DirecTV set-top boxes. Nielsen will use Kantar Media’s DirecTView service in local TV audience measurement.

Belo-owned ABC affiliate WFAA Dallas, distrustful of the audience numbers it’s receiving from longtime titan Nielsen Media Research, is making a concerted push behind Portland, Ore.-based Rentrak’s new ways of measuring eyeballs.

CBS, the strongest TV network in terms of overall viewers, said it had gained the most time-shifted viewers for the 2010-2011 season. CBS grew 10.1% or 1.18 million primetime viewers in time-shifted viewing after seven days, according to Nielsen. CBS led all networks last year with 11.67 million viewers for live-plus-same-day rating data.

The average American today has more ways to watch video — whenever, however and wherever they choose. In its new Cross-Platform Report, Nielsen finds that the resounding trend is this: Americans are spending more time watching video content on traditional TVs, mobile devices and the Internet than ever before.

Turner Broadcasting’s cable TV networks are reaping tens of thousands of incremental viewers in their Nielsen ratings that are being ignored by the rest of the TV industry, a top research executive revealed Monday during a panel discussion at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement Conference in New York.

In another important step toward general advertising marketplace assimilation, the audiences of local Hispanic TV outlets will soon be measured via the same marketplace currency as the rest of the local U.S. TV marketplace. Nielsen Tuesday said that effective with its November local TV measurement cycle, all local ratings for Hispanic programming will be based on the Nielsen Station Index (NSI), which is the same sample used to measure all of the U.S. local English-language TV outlets.

Dave Thomas, a long-time Nielsen Co. executive who helped cable networks develop the kind of research data that have made them a bigger part of the TV ratings business than broadcast networks, is stepping down next month and will be replaced by another long-time Nielsen executive, Mitch Barns, whom some see as a potential heir to Nielsen chief David Calhoun.

Nielsen reports that 96.7% of American households now own sets, down from 98.9%. The decrease is the first in 20 years. There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty, the other is technological innovation, with many young people watching on laptops and opting to forego set ownership.

With the 2011 TV Upfront meetings between TV studios and advertisers in full swing, Nielsen takes a look at emerging trends in TV viewing.

Nielsen’s Extended Screen ratings — which will include TV viewing on digital platforms — won’t make a big impact initially when the first of its numbers are released in a few weeks. Digital video viewing data of TV episodes will only mean a 1% to 2% lift over ratings of traditional TV shows, estimates Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer of Turner Broadcasting.

The syndicated AA ratings now include viewing of multiple runs of the same show, resulting in double-digit boosts to numbers in many cases. Among the bigger beneficiaries are Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Swift Justice with Nancy Grace, Don’t Forget the Lyrics, Family Feud and a number of off-net sitcoms.

Nielsen has completed testing on using set-top-box data to upgrade its existing measurement systems in local markets. The process could ultimately lead to the elimination of the much-criticized diaries used for measurement in small DMAs.

Traditional TV DVR time-shifting continues to be an older-skewing activity. But overall, time-shifting usage rose 17.9% in the third quarter of 2010 and 13.4% in the fourth quarter of 2010. Time-shifted viewers amount to 105.9 million, a 16.7% gain.

Wall Street securities firm Deutsche Bank has initiated coverage of Nielsen Co. with a “buy” rating, and a 12-month price target of $34 a share, a 28% premium over its current trading. The firm’s equities research team cited Nielsen’s “dominant competitive position” and “sustainable competitive advantage,” and the fact that its near-term revenues are extremely stable due to long-term staggered contracts with its major clients.

Nielsen Holdings, the parent of The Nielsen Company, reported a sharp decline in profit for the fourth quarter — mainly caused by retiring some debt. The new publicly traded company witnessed net income of $4 million, down from $44 million in the previous period. Nielsen took a $90 million charge for retiring debt. Without that, net income, on an adjusted basis grew nearly 9% to $99 million.

Online video usage in the U.S. is up considerably from the same time last year as time spent viewing video on PC/Mac/laptops from home and work locations increased by 45%. Although the number of unique online video viewers only increased by 3.1% from last January, level of activity was up as viewers streamed 28% more video and spent 45% more time watching. Total video streams also saw significant year-over-year growth, up 31.5% to 14.5 billion streams.

The Nielsen Co. said on Thursday that it would adopt Ad-ID, a system of digitally coding commercials that would give ratings on a commercial-by-commercial bases. The system will be administered by the Association of National Advertisers and the Four A’s, formerly the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

We may not be able to put a moratorium on new media, but we can incorporate it into the time-shifting and TV everywhere solutions that capitalize on the changes in consumer behavior they are creating. More help in understanding the new media will be available at the MFM annual conference in Atlanta in May.

Nielsen has calculated that the storm of Jan. 10-13 was the most impactful storm in recent history. The nationwide blizzards and snowstorms didn’t just deposit record-breaking amounts of snow and ice across the country, they also deposited unusually large numbers of viewers, especially kids and teens, in front of their TV sets.

Nielsen Holdings NV, the television audience ratings company owned by Blackstone Group LP, Carlyle Group, KKR & Co. and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, raised $1.6 billion in the biggest private equity-led U.S. initial public offering since 2006.

A NATPE panel considers how technology is changing means for measuring TV audiences, and how those changes could influence both content and advertisers.