Nielsen has announced that it will officially begin recording out-of-home TV viewing via mobile portable people meters that determine what programming wearers are being exposed to outside of their homes. The results will not be incorporated into overall ratings for TV shows as of yet but will eventually be integrated into the company's official findings.
Nielsen has long been the leading company in measuring television ratings, and when it merged with radio ratings giant Arbitron, it acquired their portable people meter (PPM) technology. The technology was initially developed in response to criticism of the prior method of measuring radio listening activity, which was for listeners to record their radio listening habits daily in written diaries. Besides the obvious issues with user error and forgetfulness, it was also believed that some listeners falsely reported listening to stations that featured music and news about their particular ethnic communities, which they wanted to support.
The portable people meters, which use wireless cellular technology, were introduced to give a more accurate and unbiased measurement, and now Nielsen has decided to officially incorporate them into out-of-home TV viewing ratings.
Sports broadcasters in particular have complained for years that their total viewership is under measured due to the tremendous amount of viewing in bars, airports and other people's home gatherings. While that unmeasured audience has been estimated in the past, networks like ESPN are pleased to now have some solid figures to show advertisers.
"This new service gives us the ability to capture out-of-home viewing precisely as it happens, and helps us double down on the power and delivery of live sports, while transacting on new, valuable audience segments for advertisers," according to Artie Bulgrin, ESPN's senior vice president of global research and analytics.
Sports viewership has dropped considerably lately, and with ESPN's subscriber tally falling and NFL viewership ratings taking a deep plunge this year, Nielsen's implementation of the PPM measurements couldn't have come at a better time. Nielsen says the new ratings will not be incorporated into official ratings reports, though, until "a later stage," so this year's football ratings won't improve due to the move.
Nielsen will implement a sampling of 44 markets with 75,000 PPMs in use. Some advertisers are wary of the PPM measurement system, however, because they feel that despite the fact that viewers may be within earshot of a particular broadcast, audiences in crowded bars and other busy areas can't necessarily hear the content of their commercials. Whether they will accept PPM viewing measurements as equal to those reported from viewer's homes remains to be seen as Nielsen eventually attempts to integrate the new ratings into its current measurement system.
