The Wall Street Journal-20080131-TNS Aims to Take Bite Out of Nielsen- Boxes From DirecTV To Mine New Data On Viewing Patterns

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TNS Aims to Take Bite Out of Nielsen; Boxes From DirecTV To Mine New Data On Viewing Patterns

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In the latest and most significant effort yet to challenge Nielsen's dominance in the TV measurement business, TNS Media Research will use set-top box data from 100,000 DirecTV households around the country to mine new information about television viewing patterns.

Nielsen has long been the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to measuring how many people watch TV, churning out data that marketers use to target consumers. But the move by TNS, expected to be announced as early as today, is one of several in the past year aimed at changing that. Companies including TNS and TiVo have been taking a run at Nielsen with new set-top box data that offers second-by-second information about TV programs and commercials.

These companies believe their data fill gaps in Nielsen's offerings. Nielsen, for example, gets its information from an audience panel that includes about 14,000 households nationwide. TNS's new service, dubbed TNS DirecTView, will study more than seven times that number of homes. The larger size of the panel makes the research more stable and allows subscribers to the service to get information about smaller channels, say TNS and DirecTV.

While Nielsen still has an enviable position in the TV-ratings business, media buyers, advertisers and TV networks are increasingly subscribing to companies like TNS and TiVo as well, to provide a richer picture of TV viewing patterns. The TV industry is hoping that this additional information will bring new insights into why people turn away from commercials, so networks can make their ads more effective.

"I think this is the year to really improve TV's accountability," says Tracey Scheppach, senior vice president and video innovations director at Publicis Groupe's Starcom Worldwide, a media firm. "We shouldn't continue to justify doing $70 billion of business off of 12,000 homes when the data exist. So let's explore it," she adds.

Starcom is looking at how it can use the nationwide second-by-second data to land future ad deals.

Unlike Nielsen, which requires its audience panels to use a measurement device, TNS will be tapping into viewers' set-top boxes for its second-by-second data about which TV programs and commercials they saw live or through digital video recording. (Nielsen's data are minute by minute.) Supporters say set-top box data are more useful to marketers -- and less burdensome to participants. They also point to a 2009 deadline for eliminating over-the-air analog transmission that they say will likely increase the number of set-top boxes, which are already in more than 50% of U.S. households.

Set-top boxes aren't pitch-perfect, though. Such data can't tell when a viewer gets up from the couch and misses an ad. And most of the information offered to this point has been limited in scope because it relies on set-top boxes from only narrow regions of the country like Los Angeles or New York, rather than Nielsen's nationwide audience panel.

Cable operators and other owners of set-top box data have been moving cautiously with such deals, wary of privacy violations, among other things. With their new service, TNS and DirecTV will recruit 100,000 households to participate in the anonymous panel. TNS won't be able to see the name of a participating household, but it will have access to demographic information about the household, including income, education level and working status, says George Shababb, chief operating officer of TNS Media Research.

Eric Shanks, executive vice president of DirecTV Entertainment, doesn't think the company will have a problem recruiting 100,000 households from DirecTV's customer base of 16.6 million. "Some customers realize that our ability to see what's performing well and not performing well makes DirecTV better for our customers, and some people would prefer not to have anything to do with it at all," he says.

TNS, a global media-measurement company, recently pushed into set- top box data collection after years of using diaries and other traditional means of gauging TV viewing habits. Along with its DirecTV deal in the U.S., TNS has been mining data from set-top boxes in the United Kingdom and other regions.

Advertisers, media buyers and network executives are hungry for new data amid a seismic shift in the TV landscape, as viewers increasingly use digital video recorders and zap through ads. That demand spurred DirecTV to open its data to TNS, says DirectTV's Mr. Shanks.

While TNS, TiVo and others jockey for position, Nielsen has been rejigging its offerings too: Last week, it announced a new service that measures video-on-demand usage based on set-top box data from cable operator Comcast.