NewTeeVee Live: Nielsen Eyes Extended Screens

Nielsen has been tallying TV ratings for years, but with shows and video offerings proliferating online through various distribution points, what a TV audience actually consists of is shifting. At NewTeeVeeLive today, Brian Fuhrer, SVP and Media Program Leader at The Nielsen Company, weighed in on the need to measure video audiences across TV, the web, mobile devices and more.

Fuhrer showed data emphasizing that both television and online video consumption are rapidly growing. He said that as people watch video and television on “extended screens,” including on mobile devices, advertisers are putting increasing pressure on audience metrics providers to deliver accurate numbers.

How can Nielsen accurately measure viewership on extended screens? One initiative that the company is focused on is measuring Internet usage data and TV viewing habits for homes included in the National Television Panel. The hope is to quantify video viewing patterns on TV and online. Fuhrer said that getting to accurate Internet video viewing patterns will take 6-7 months. “It will give us a very robust sample that we think we can do a lot with regarding extended screens,” he said.