Nielsen

Nielsen’s Year in Sports 2010 reveals that households earning more than $100,000 are more likely to watch major sporting events like the Super Bowl, World Series or World Cup.

Nielsen, the market leader in traditional TV ratings, is having a tough time tracking eyeballs elsewhere. It has yet to offer advertisers an accepted way of measuring viewers who watch video on their home computers — let alone on portable devices. Although it is working on measuring video viewing on portable devices, Nielsen said it has no timeline for a rollout.

A Federal judge in Miami ruled in favor of the Nielsen Co., which had been sued by Sunbeam Television, owner of WSVN Miami, for abusing its monopoly power over TV ratings when it installed its new local people meter audience measurement system.

Nielsen Thursday said it is delaying a plan to add duplicate viewing of TV shows to its national TV “currency” ratings two months until April 1. Nielsen said it would move forward with its original plan to add the duplicate viewing data to its “respondent-level data,” which are the building blocks of its national TV ratings, as originally planned beginning Jan. 31.

Americans watched more television than ever in 2010, according to the Nielsen Co., and the generation-long shift to cable from broadcast continued.

On Thursday, during CNBC’s The Strategy Session, the financial news network reported that Nielsen Holdings, the global TV rating and consumer measurement company, is looking to go public as early as January. The company back in June filed with the SEC for an initial public offering of up to $1.75 billion of its common stock.

With TV networks and viewers alike fretting about commercials — you’re not watching enough of them or you’re forced to watch too many — companies are desperate to find that ad campaign that makes you stop and gawk. According to Nielsen’s list of the Top 10 Best-Liked TV Commercials of the year, six companies have been particularly successful in the endeavor, although they’re probably not the ones you’d expect.

Nielsen Wednesday began offering clients a sneak preview of its so-called “extended screen” ratings, which will add online audience estimates to the ratings of TV shows that are also distributed over the Internet. Nielsen said the previews would begin the week of Jan. 3, and said the data would “broadly demonstrate the impact of online viewing” on TV programming.

But a new Nielsen report shows that C3 ratings of network programming rise 16%, thanks to people watching commercials while using a DVR. That data is for 18-to-49 year-olds for ABC, CBS, CW, Fox and NBC combined.

While the number of people watching videos on their mobile phones remains relatively small compared to TV, they are increasingly using the devices to that end. On a year-to-year basis, the number of people watching mobile video increased more than 43%, while the amount of time spent doing so was up almost 7%.

CBS senior research executive David Poltrack estimates the four broadcast networks will grow 5% in advertising revenue in 2011 — in part by some 20% or more higher scatter pricing. But not all networks will benefit.

The Media Rating Council’s revocation of its accreditation of Nielsen’s NSI diary ratings last month didn’t surprise many in the industry who have complained about the paper-based system. And while Nielsen says it’s fixed the problem, getting reaccredited takes time. So by the time the February ratings books go out, Nielsen (and its clients) may still be hanging out on a limb.

With shopping season in full swing, advertisers are rolling out their holiday-themed ads, many of which are sure to feature a cartoon reindeer or other festive animated character. While the many benefits of using animation in TV ads are clear, new research from the Nielsen Co. suggests that, although marketers have a lot to gain with animated ads, they may be sacrificing audience engagement with commercials that don’t resonate as well with savvy consumers.

As it moves toward an IPO, Nielsen has added three years to CEO David Calhoun’s contract. In the process, Calhoun gets a $6 million signing bonus and jump in his base salary from $1.5 million to $1.625 million.

The Media Rating Council has revoked its accreditation for Nielsen’s 154 diary-only local TV market reports, effective with the 2009 audit period.

Nielsen disclosed Wednesday that its online measurement system has been under-counting unique visitors to the top 1,000 sites on the Web by an average of 5%, the latest in a series of problems for the company.

Pay TV industry folks have heatedly debated this fall whether consumers are dropping their cable or other TV subscriptions to watch more TV content online. A new study by Nielsen, commissioned by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, argues that most people who watch at least some content from the Web on their TV sets are “cord keepers” rather than “cord cutters.”

Now in 56% of U.S. households, high-definition television is one of the most quickly adopted consumer entertainment technologies of the past 20 years, but true HD viewing is still far eclipsed by viewing of standard-definition TV.

NEW YORK (AP) – Television viewers were probably exposed to more political ads last month than ever before. The Nielsen Co. said Friday that nearly 1.48 million political ads aired […]

The Nielsen Co. disclosed Thursday it has been undercounting traffic to websites — for at least the last three months — due to a flaw in its system that failed to recognize long internet addresses, underestimating “time spent” on the Internet and especially social-media sites.