

Nielsen ratings: Why has no one disrupted nielsen ratings? - rgovind

I have a nielsen box and I find it to be a 50 yr technology. I don&#x27;t understand why they need 5 boxes (For user input box, one cable box, two modems, and some adapter for power) for what one can nowadays do in a simple phone. Its also very user unfriendly.<p>Why do TV companies still use nielsen ratings?
======
wikwocket
Disrupt what? Building custom hardware boxes and paying people to gather their
behavioral data? I can't see a lot of young hackers jumping on this problem.

Nielsen's actual business is getting data (staggeringly enormous amounts of
data - not just TV watching but consumer purchase data, retail POS data, etc),
and then leveraging it. If you want to disrupt something, it's the collection
and use/sale of this information.

However, there is a strong network effect here. The value of the data you
collect is proportional to how established you are and how much
participation/penetration you have in an industry. Big companies (like
TV/media companies, retail chains, and manufacturers) want big data from big
providers. They want large amounts of reliable data that speaks for an entire
industry, nationwide and worldwide, to inform their very-high-dollar
decisions. If you can collect that, and convince e.g. Walmart that your data
is worth buying, go for it!

------
BorisMelnik
I think a lot of people have, privately at least. My guess for why they are
still around is the fact that they have literally become a household name and
have the infrastructure to back it up.

As far as technology, you hit the nail on the head. A simple Android / iPhone
app could literally replace all 5 boxes. I gasped when I heard they are still
using modems, jeeze.

~~~
loumf
Nielsen knows that people lie on TV surveys. They need to monitor and compare
that to surveys.

~~~
logn
Nielsen presumably has also weighted the results from the sample set properly
(or picked a representative sample) so that it's indicative of the nation. The
results from an Android app would need to be analyzed by a polling firm for
them to have the same usefulness.

------
soneca
Do you get paid for keeping that Nielsen box? That is a doubt i've always had.

An idea I have for the late Idea Sunday: a mobile app where the user let it on
next to him while watching TV and it recognize what is he seeing by the sound.
No need for input or action by the user.

~~~
rgovind
Yes. I get paid a princely sum of $25 per month. I been Thinkig on same lines
as you but there are some challenges. You need detailed demographics
information on per household basis(age sex occupation appliances in home
number if cars education etc).also whatever data u have must prove to tv
studios and networks to be more useful than existing Nielsen ratings. but
since Nielsen only uses 50000 boxes in entire USA, you demographics
information those not detailed May be more useful. Anyone interested in
brainstorming?

------
officialjunk
I think viggle is trying to disrupt this space. They use audio matching to
"check-in" to shows from your phone, which earn you points you can redeem for
tangible rewards, all while collecting viewer data at a more granular level
than a neilson box.

------
hcho
Not sure about the US, but in the UK Sky/Virgin Media set top boxes are
internet connected. I'd be very surprised if they didn't send viewing stats
home.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
They can track what the set-top boxes are watching in the US too, but
advertisers don't care how many TVs are turned on; they care how many people
are watching and what the demographics of those people are. Set-top boxes
can't capture that information.

For someone to disrupt Nielsen, they would need to collect demographic
information about the people watching, not just the number of devices that are
watching.

