Select Nielsen Clients To Meet On Plan To Integrate Online Viewing Into TV Ratings

Nielsen has invited a small group of its most influential clients to participate in a "special meeting" next week to discuss how it should handle the way it measures and reports viewing of conventional TV programming accessed via online media. The Oct. 16th meeting comes as Nielsen has already begun measuring online behavior in some households in its national TV ratings sample, and as Nielsen contemplates expanding that to its entire sample and formally integrating online viewing of TV programming into its official ratings currency. The meeting, which is separate from a series of conventional national client meetings being held in New York and Los Angeles next week, was characterized by Nielsen executives has having the same importance a seminal meeting it held in the fall of 2006 to determine how to incorporate time-shifted viewing data into its national TV ratings currency. The outcome of that meeting culminated in the creation of the so-called C3 ratings that are currently used by advertisers and agencies to negotiate their national TV advertising buys.