ChasNote

When I saw the headline at AdAge, I had to laugh.  Nielsen finally starts measuring actual viewership of the commercials (not just the shows in which those commercials reside) — about 25 years after the invention of the remote control — and NBC’s cable unit and the Cable Ad Bureau immediately opt out under protest!

But there’s more to it.  First, it sounds like cable is more defensive than broadcast about the issue:

“When stacked against the broadcast networks, cable networks have done poorly when it comes to how many viewers stick around for the ads. While a broadcast network might typically lose 5% of viewers watching the shows, cable might lose between 8%-10% of its audience during the breaks. Many in cable believe that the way Nielsen is calculating viewership of commercials has too many flaws and they don’t want media buyers or clients drawing conclusions about cable’s performance.”

The other issue is a bigger one: Can the big panel-based survey firms do a good job with niche (or “local” in the case of TV):

“Among the issues irking cable channels are Nielsen’s ability to properly and consistently identify local vs. national spots. Commercial ratings are only supposed to measure the ratings of national commercials.”

Nielsen, Arbitron, Comscore and the rest need to figure out how to change their approaches to match consumer behavior.  As we consumers take advantage of more choices (aka, media fragmentation), the metrics bodies need to follow us; they need to build panels or technologies that don’t break for every niche or not-exactly-mainstream content outlet.