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The Ratings Revolution Will Not Be Televised
by Dave Zornow
Published in Cynopsis:Weekender newsletter, 10/13/05
If competition is good for business, then why is there only one TV
ratings company? If there’s a simple answer, AGB, ScanAmerica, SMART
and AdCom would like to hear it. Over the past 25 years, each of these
Nielsen wannabe competitors tried and failed to create a second TV
ratings service.
But it’s a different world today. Set top ratings vendors like TNS,
erinMedia
and Rentrak
are working with cable MSOs to chart a bright future in
Nielsen-challenged niches. But don’t count the perennial ratings champ
out yet. You can criticize Nielsen’s pricing and product, but you have
to admire their ability to defend their turf and improve their product
when challenged.
What can this generation of ratings’ challengers do to avoid their
predecessors’ mistakes?
- “They need patience,” says Ken Wollenberg, EVP at Simmons
Marketing Solutions. “You can’t change thinking overnight.”
Wollenberg, whose career has included selling Arbitron’s
ScanAmerica and Nielsen’s local people meters, adds that a me-too
service won’t cut it today. “The demands for accountability
require reporting that goes beyond a simply counting eyeballs.”
- Success may not belong to the smartest or the swiftest – but to
the company who knows how to cut deals. TNS Media Research COO
George Shababb says set top box data will “shift control from the
vendor to the [MSO]…creating an open market for the data.”
Shababb looks to the UPC scanner business model as a precedent. Only
time will tell if MSOs will share their proprietary set top box data
in exchange for some compensation.
- Stay off Nielsen’s radar. According to SVP Cathy Hetzel, Rentrak
doesn’t aspire to be a “ratings service.” Rentrak aggregates
VOD and set top box data on a custom basis, focusing on a niche for
which Nielsen has very little sample data.
- Don’t be everything to everyone. Set top box vendors can offer
more sample from one cable system than Nielsen has for the whole
country. But they don’t have a 100% solution for demographics or
any coverage for broadcast-only homes. Keep expectations reasonable
by not promising the world “the world” and educate buyers and
sellers about modeling techniques which can produce complementary
set top box data where Nielsen ratings aren’t comprehensive.
What happens next? Its partly up to us -- the consumers of Nielsen's
ratings. As a buyer, seller, programmer and marketer, our encouragement
-- or apathy -- will signal vendors, MSOs and others that there's a
business here. Tell them what you think. ##
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