Big media’s new research coalition’s mixed message
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It’s not an academic exercise. No, it’s a research foundation. It’s a competitor to Nielsen. No, it’s not a slap at Nielsen at all.
Confused? We are too. The conference call detailing the media industry’s creation of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (see our earlier post) sent out a few mixed messages. Let’s hope their efforts to develop new and better ways to measure ratings are a little clearer.
NBC Universal Research President Alan Wurtzel opened the call, saying the coalition was ‘neither a trade or academic organization’ as all the members have ‘skin in the game’ and it’s ‘time to take our future into our own hands.’
Pretty tough talk. Yet a few minutes later Wurtzel went out of his way to say the purpose of CIMM was not to build a better Nielsen.
‘This is not about establishing a competitor to Nielsen,’ Wurtzel stressed. In fact, he added, this was ‘never really about Nielsen.’
So lets get this straight. A group of media giants including News Corp., NBC Universal, Walt Disney Co., CBS, Viacom, Time Warner and Discovery are getting together with Procter & Gamble, AT&T, Unilever and several major advertising agencies to do research on how to better track media consumption -- and it’s not about Nielsen?
CBS’s Dave Poltrack said the purpose of this organization is to ‘support innovative research,’ but that if anything is actually developed for commercial use, that would be done independent of the coalition.
Missing from the list of industries involved is new media (no Google, no Yahoo), which is interesting because one of the things this organization stressed is that it wants to find a better way to measure media consumption online and on mobile devices. That doesn’t mean the group won’t be adding new members who are able to pony up the entry fee. The companies involved would not say how much they have raised in funding but indicated it was in the seven figures. The entry fee to be part of CIMM is not seven figures, however.
This is not the first time there have been efforts to build better systems to measure audiences, and it certainly is needed. Nielsen has had lots of issues over the past few years with its measurement systems, and if a bunch of big companies getting together can help encourage them to shake things up, that’s not so bad. In fact, CIMM is not against having Nielsen join its efforts if it wants to apply for membership.
A Nielsen spokeswoman said the ratings firm ‘shares all of the objectives’ of the coalition and ‘has always worked closely with clients to bring innovation to the industry.’ The company said it looks forward to working with CIMM and would like to hear more about its plans.
So would we.
-- Joe Flint
