The Measurement Mess

TV uses very different measures of usage than those found in the digital world, making it difficult if not impossible to add up total viewing for a show across TV, online, mobile, social media and other digital platforms.

Worse, the fastest-growing areas of digital media-mobile phones and tablets-are not currently being measured at all by Nielsen, which supplies the ratings currency for the $70 billion TV ad spend. The result, some researchers complain, is morass of incompatible data that is forcing them to create what several call "Frankenmetrics."