Nielsen Media Research unveiled the future of People Meters earlier this month with a road show that took its new Active/Passive Digital People Meter (A/P Meter) to industry members in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
The A/P Meter, now undergoing a 500-home test in the northeastern U.S., is designed to function in a converged broadcast market – one that combines television, Internet and PC use – and to accurately identify analogue or digital signals whether they’re transmitted through cable, satellite or telephone lines.
The new system is touted to do more than just provide accurate audience ratings. One of its key components, the Media Monitoring Site (MMS), is also used to confirm television commercial carriage as well as track competitive advertising. More than 100 Media Monitoring Sites are already doing just that in the U.S.
Nielsen says the accuracy of its 24-hour-a-day tracking is running at over 94% and results can be monitored by Nielsen Media clients via the Internet.
Mike Leahy, Nielsen Media’s group vice-president, sales and marketing, says the first MMS will be installed in the Toronto market by the end of May and that the company will be working with its advisory boards and industry members to develop the service in Canada.
The Media Monitoring Site (MMS), which Leahy describes as a communications hub, is a grouping of advanced computers that monitors all broadcasts in a market, 24 hours a day, and either actively reads its video or audio code or, if it’s unencoded, passively assigns it an audio or video signature.
David Chung, president of MaxxMedia, the media division of the Vickers & Benson Companies, sees the new system as a step forward in media measurement, and looks forward to an era of next-day commercial verification.
‘Not only would it help in terms of verification that our commercials ran, but as the market moves forward in direct response, we’d be able to speed up the process.
‘We would be able to get verification quickly, link it back [to the call centres], and be able to react a lot faster to change the schedules of direct response campaigns.’
Chung says that with verification time currently ranging anywhere from a few days to a week, there is no capability to react quickly.
Leahy says Nielsen Media does not plan to do a massive retrofit of the current meters in homes but rather phase them in as households participating in its Nielsen Media Research Panel adopt new technology such as digital television or Web TV.
He says the current People Meter, which uses a tuner probe of both the VCR and television to determine the signal, is still viable for 90% of its household panel. But the reason Nielsen is moving away from the tuner probe approach is because in a digital world it won’t be practical – each tuner will deliver five or six signals.
While some may feel that the high-tech future of broadcast is still a long way off, Leahy points out that digital broadcasting is already underway in the U.S., and that Canada isn’t far behind.
‘Let’s not forget that just 10 years ago, the World Wide Web existed only as a proposal on paper. Even right now, converged digital broadcasts are further along than the Web was then.
‘That’s the speed of innovation in a digital world. It would be reckless to put this off.’
Nielsen Media’s competitor in Canada, BBM Bureau of Measurement has 500 homes in Vancouver metered with its Taylor Nelson AGB picture matching system and is looking for support to roll out to other markets. Its tentative plans are to move into Ontario and Quebec this September and roll out nationally next March.
Ron Bremner, vice-president of BBM Television, says the company is looking at the impact of Web TV and other technologies but doesn’t believe they’re a real issue today.
He says the BBM system has undergone intense scrutiny and captures satellite and simulcast signals very effectively.
