Nielsen Rushes into PVR Time-Shift Reporting with 60-Home Sample

With 2 new sets of show ratings -- including playbacks within a day and a week of when shows are broadcast -- on top of the traditional, real time viewing data, broadcasting, programming and advertising players will have even more figures to cherry-pick and spin in negotiations and publicity, Nielsen executives warned. Advertisers probably will focus on the old “live” ratings when they are introducing new products and on “live plus 7-day” figures -- which will capture replays within 168 hours of broadcast -- for messages that don’t have so much immediacy, said Pat McDonough, senior vp-planning, policy & analysis.

One journalist on a conference call expressed bewilderment about what numbers to report and asked about possible chaos in coming weeks as the new situation shakes out, and again when VoD numbers are added, as Nielsen promises starting in the spring for national ratings. Nielsen officials said clients will still be free to release the data they wish but the research firm will be available to help sort out problems. Communications Vp Karen Gyemisi suggested a focus on live plus 7-day ratings as the most useful numbers to report on weekly deadlines.

The “live plus 7-day” figures, will reflect 90% of PVR use, said Nielsen Communications Vp Anne Elliot. These will first be released publicly Jan. 17, a day later than the usual Mondays because of Martin Luther King’s birthday. “Live plus same day” ratings will include viewing by 3 a.m. of shows recorded on TiVos and cable and satellite boxes. These will be released first Jan. 4 because of New Year’s but usually on Tuesdays. Nielsen started incorporating PVR use in most local market samples in April, Gyemisi said.

U.S. PVR penetration remains relatively small at 7%, and lumping in viewing of recordings probably won’t affect ratings much the first few months, especially since the most frequently recorded shows are typically the highest rated already, Elliot said. Others have said PVRs could be in about 25% of homes by 2007, as cable companies and others market the devices assertively, McDonough said.

But advertisers and broadcasters are so eager to understand PVR owners’ behavior better that Nielsen felt obliged to start offering data based on just dozens of homes, McDonough said. She said Nielsen ordinarily uses samples no smaller than 150 homes to study new market developments, but even with the margin of error at first the numbers can be interesting anecdotally or for qualitative analysis. About 100 more PVR homes a month will be added until a nationally representative sample is reached around July, McDonough said. Clients can study commercial-skipping from Nielsen’s minute-by-minute ratings breakdown, McDonough said.

The PVR measurement has been a long time coming. In 2003, Nielsen offered clients the addition of live plus 7 day, with live plus same day to follow shortly, Eliot told us. But even when the firm modified that to offer flexibility on which of the 2 sets of PVR data would start first, clients asked that no such reporting start until live plus same day and live plus 7 day were both available, she said. Businesses worried that whichever PVR numbers came 2nd would never gain the importance of those that had come earlier, Eliot said. No such data could be offered until clients had, tested and learned to use all components of Nielsen’s new active-passive meters, she said on the conference call. These meters will be in 40% of Nielsen homes in a year and the rollout will continue until it covers all sample households with PVRs, VoD or other advanced TV technologies, McDonough said.