NBCU Bets On Olympics, Super Bowl in Bid to Out-Measure Nielsen

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorWhile the colorful and grandiose Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony unfurls on TV, the company showing all the pomp has an equally elaborate project taking place off camera.NBCUniversal has been one of the most vocal critics of Nielsen, the company that has for decades measured TV audiences and provided tabulations that serve as the bedrock of ad deals for the nation’s TV networks.

To boost its efforts to offer an alternate means of counting the video-watching masses, NBCU is working with more than 30 different advertisers to test a new measurement tool it has built with iSpot.TV — and using the company’s Olympics and looming Super Bowl broadcasts as a sort of test run before trying to get more sponsors to embrace the system during the industry’s annual “upfront” ad-sales season later this year.

No other TV events are likely to generate the large-scale viewership of NBC’s two sports broadcasts over the next 12 months. “We are of the opinion that everyone needs better measurement, better data” around how audiences watch TV in an era when streaming, on-demand video is fast becoming ubiquitous.

says Kelly Abcarian, executive vice president of measurement and impact at NBCU’s ad-sales division. “We think that there’s a need to accelerate.”Nielsen is working on that task as well.