Nielsen Uses TV and Web Data in New Targeting Effort

Nielsen’s been fairly busy attempting to connect the dots between TV and online advertising.

The research firm is announcing Nielsen Online Audience Segments—TV Viewing, a program that’s designed to let a brand target online consumers based on their television and Web-viewing habits. Interestingly, Jonathan Carson, Nielsen’s general manager of digital, said the program was meant to attract “advertisers that are looking to reach consumers who don’t watch a lot of TV.” Indeed, if brands—a Trader Joe’s or a Zappos, perhaps—want to target cord-cutters with online ads, Carson said his system could suss out that audience segment. More generally though, he said, “It will enable our [online] publisher and network partners to organize their audiences according to what those individuals watched on television.”