Ratings Debate Returns

Recessions are known for two things: driving innovation or stalling it. It’s hard to know which is true when it comes to the news that the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement is looking to push forward new ways of measuring TV and other video viewing. The participants, who are Nielsen’s biggest clients, are yet to say whether they really intend to challenge Nielsen’s dominance or whether this is some negotiating ploy.What’s pushing the coalition is fear in some quarters is that online viewing grows exponentially and there’s no uniform way to measure it. The other fear is that there are a million ways to measure online while many local TV markets are measured by paper diaries.

As one of my sources said: “Online viewing is not that big now, but it will be big and no-one wants be caught with their pants down.” The availability of new data streams that challenge Nielsen’s dominance are all well and good but there’s only one currency and Nielsen controls it.