To put this in terms Bill would use…
Translation for the rational: under fire for local measurement issues, Nielsen has some good data to spin at the national level.
Translation for the crazy: last week Nielsen counted slightly more viewers for the shows you love that hardly anyone else watches, while counting slightly fewer viewers for the shows you hate that are watched by many more people than the shows you like. But, aside from last week, for the last 5 years you’ve been screwed!
via MediaWeek:
For the week ending Nov. 15, the sample performance indicator (SPI), which measures the percentage of people who were asked to join Nielsen’s sample and are producing useable data, reached 45.9 percent, its highest levels since May 2004. Year-to-date, the average SPI is 44.4 percent.
So this means that the Neilsen monopoly’s horrible sample rate just got slightly less horrible? Yeah! Bingo!!
My favorite part of the article:
“Mediaweek is a unit of the Nielsen Co.”
If good news about a network came from that network, you would be snarky and make fun of it, but since you rely on Nielsen numbers in order to have a site, I guess you can’t bad mouth them. BINGO!!
So at least half of Nielsen families don’t know how to use the devices that measure their viewing? Or is the problem Nielsen’s hardware, software, and/or staff? Why would less than half the people be producing useable data?
Rational explanation, not crazy.
Chad, I am pretty familiar with what’s involved in data sampling for a variety of reasons. Things like certain hospital lab sampling sometimes have usable data results that are far more disconcerting to me (say 70% range).
When someone’s life is potentially on the line, it’s still not 100% usable data! Regardless of what you do or how much you are willing to spend, you can’t get to 100% usable data. But some things (say, hospital lab results) or worth spending money for to have a higher percentage of usable data.
That TV ratings aren’t necessarily one of them, isn’t a big surprise to me. It’s not a conspiracy…
Who used the word “conspiracy”? Not me.
I agree TV rating are not that important. And when you consider the LARGE margin of error, Neilsen numbers are even less important. When a 4.0 rating means it was somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5, the number becomes pretty meaningless, certainly not worthy detailed analysis.
I just think people on this site need to remember that they have a very small amount of data available to them, while the networks have much greater data, a lot of which doesn’t come from Neilsen at all.
Bingo?
And to say that you guys rely on Neilsen in order to have numbers to post, and that you don’t want to undermine the credibility of the Neilsen numbers, is not a conspiracy. It’s common sense.
Chad, you cite B.S. margin of error statistics, what’s your source on that?
Nielsen is the primary data advertising is bought and sold based on. Most of the data we DON’T have access to is in fact still Nielsen data!
Think C3 data…
Is there other data? Sure. Does it matter? Not very much to a show’s ability to make advertising revenue and so not from the perspective of renewal and cancellation fates. And by the way, while I have no particular axe to grind with Nielsen, it wouldn’t bother me if the broadcasters and advertisers announced tomorrow they are switching to “XYZ”. It’s just that XYZ doesn’t exist, so the broadcasters and advertisers aren’t announcing it, and so we focus on the numbers that are used (or at least the proxy of them that is widely available).
You can pretend the world and the market exists in some other fashion than it actually does, and it’s fine with me if you don’t want to call that a conspiracy, but there’s no upside for us to pretend such things.
Nielsen is a de facto monopoly. From the point of view of this web site, nothing would be better than that NOT being the case. If there were two (or more) widely used data sources to compare and contrast, producing analysis would be much more interesting for us.
Chad, spelling it Neilsen undermines your argument.
It’s not a matter of keeping up an illusion of accuracy or anything. It’s the fact that there is one source of info which, whether you agree with the accuracy or not, is the number one deciding factor in renewal decisions. And I’m not sure where you got that margin of error from.
Shouldn’t start typing something and then leave it for 20 mins….
If I understand this correctly:
1) Nilson numbers are flawed
2) They are the only game in town
3) Ad buyers use these numbers because of #2
4) Ad buys determine if a show is profitable
5) Unprofitable shows are cancelled
It seems to me that because of #2 (through #5), #1 is completely and totally irrelevant.
The Nielsen numbers do matter, but only because they matter to the networks and ad buyers. That doesn’t make them accurate, but it does make them relevant. But if you do know something about statistical research, Robert, then you know that one data source is never statistically significant. The mere fact that Nielsen has a monopoly immediately calls into question everything they put out. That may not be their fault, you understand, but it is still a fact.
I understand there are no other options, so we have to go with what we have, but there is absolutely no objective reason to believe that Nielsen is even getting it half right. Their methods have never been put under any type of rigorous independent scrutiny, nor have their results ever been backed up by any independent–or even competing–agency.
Hey, that doesn’t mean they are wrong either. Absence of proof is not proof, so I’m not trying to yank the conspiracy chain here. But it doesn’t mean they are right, either, and history is rife with us finding out that things we always took for granted were horribly inaccurate when they were finally examined with an objective eye.
I’ll deal with the numbers as they are, without comment, but I won’t even begin to agree with anyone who tells me they have good reason to believe that Nielsen is right on the ball, or even close to on the ball.
It’s just not possible to know that for certain one way or the other.
I think it’s the wording, “producing useable data.” Meaning they turned on their televisions?
Schmoker,
I think there *are* objective reasons to conclude that either Nielsen is getting it at least half right or that neither the buyers or sellers of advertising care much if they are not.
I don’t see the advertisers or the broadcast or cable networks (the people who use, need and BUY the data) complaining much about the accuracy of the data.
I see the networks complaining about developing capabilities to measure online viewing better, so they can sell the same ads that run on TV online as well.
I see the advertisers complaining about lack of granular measurement of commercial viewing (how much was MY commercial viewed, rather than the average commercial viewing stats they get), or lack of commercial viewing measurement at all in the case of local markets.
What I see from the customers of the data, both on the buy and sell sides of advertising is complaints about a lot of things that don’t involve accuracy of the data.
It’s not a defense of Nielsen, but a lot of fans of TV shows are much more concerned with the accuracy of the data than the actual consumers of the data are. From my perspective, not only do the opinions of the buyers and sellers of advertising matter more than the fans’ anyway, I actually trust their opinions on the accuracy of the data more. I could be wrong, but I believe if either side felt that the measurement was WILDLY off in ways that benefited one side to the detriment of the other, you’d hear about that non stop!
That you aren’t hearing it doesn’t necessarily make the data more accurate, but it does mean the subscribers of the data don’t think the data is wildly inaccurate. Though it is possible they think it’s wildly inaccurate but in a way that balances out for both sides.
While there are priorities that the advertisers and networks have for Nielsen, improved accuracy doesn’t seem chief among them.
The networks and advertisers are NOT victims here, they are merely the enablers of the Nielsen monopoly.
The networks and advertisers (and the brokers) make a lot of money. Nielsen is a monopoly because neither side of the advertising equation feels its worth ponying up real money to get something better. So, they throw play money around ($100K to participate in CIMM) to mount pressure on Nielsen in public instead of investing what is probably the hundreds of millions (if not more) necessary to fund a truly viable alternative.
For the record, I don’t think that there is a single country in the world where the television ratings research business is not a monopoly.
In fact, as the research itself is incredibly expensive, in most markets it is designed to be a monopoly: It is often organized by a sort of cooperative (like BARB in the UK or AGF in Germany) or a consortium (like Médiamétrie in France) consisting of all the relevant players – ie television networks, media agencies and key brand advertisers.
Bob, I agree with you across the board. I said that the customers accept the data, so that we must all accept and deal with that reality. It’s just that doesn’t make it accurate. And the customers have no better idea whether it really is accurate than we do.
One data stream coming from one company with zero independent confirmation, and zero competition, simply means that none of us, including the customers and Nielsen themselves, really know how accurate the data is. Personally, I think some of it is probably pretty decent, but much it is probably way off.
Think about it, Bob. What incentive does Nielsen even have to get it right? It’s not like someone else can steal their contract away from them.
It’s a bad situation, and it’s bizarre that so many billions are being controlled and directed so haphazardly. But just wait until these cable boxes and DVRs are turned into people meters. We should learn a lot more then. And “then” is probably coming sooner than we think.
I’m sorry, am I the only one on the planet that knows about iTvRatings.com ? Oh wait! no, I think they have 200K more members than Nielsen has boxes in peoples homes.
Dillon, no, but perhaps you are one of the ones who imagines that it matters.