This article is more than 9 years old.
Nielsen has just published its latest quarterly report of American media consumption. It is significant that after many years of calling this study the “Cross Platform Report” they now call it the "
- Audiences Everywhere. Nielsen suggests that advertisers and media companies need to get over themselves, stop whining about platform proliferation and get on with delivering to their audiences – wherever they are.
- You can run, but you can’t hide. All media companies audiences will be measured – whether they like it or not – and be part of the “total.” Even if
Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video do not give their assent, their audio signatures are picked up by the Nielsen meter and will identify which shows are being streamed for computers, laptops and some tablets.
- Audiences over time. The Nielsen report gave anecdotal information on four shows and how the practice of licensing old seasons of these shows to Netflix or Hulu affects viewership in the current TV season. (Two shows' current ratings were negatively impacted and two positively.) As irritating and totally inadequate as this information is, it does indicate that Nielsen is considering how to capture viewership of a show over time.
The rise of the newer ways that audiences consume video is illustrated with one particularly dramatic statistic: Since 2011, watching video is now 26% -- up from just 15% -- of the time spent on "using the internet on a computer" plus "watching video on the internet."
