Nielsen to Be Video Cop
For years, media and technology companies have been ensnarled in a battle over the rights to video posted online. Now ratings giant Nielsen wants to be the policeman. — Nielsen is rolling out a new service that aims to ensure that video is distributed and viewed …
Context & Ripple Effects
Nielsen spent 2007 defending its core franchise on two flanks: its own data showed the top ten web customers cutting ad spend in September, and its DVR study concluded that counting time-shifted viewing erases apparent ratings drops while shrinking the ad-reached audience. In October, Google moved onto its turf by tracking TV ad audiences, and in August the company launched 'Hey! Nielsen,' an entertainment social network chasing MySpace and Facebook.
First-order effects
- Rights-holders locked in long-running battles over online video gain an established measurement brand offering distribution policing, giving them a tool short of legal action for tracking where their footage travels.
- Google's entry into TV ad-audience tracking forces Nielsen to compete beyond traditional set-top panels, and this service stakes out enforcement territory Google has not claimed.
Second-order effects
- Content-identification vendors such as Digimarc and Attributor become either Nielsen's suppliers or its rivals, since the policing layer depends on fingerprinting and attribution technology they already sell.
- Video-hosting platforms face pressure to license detection services proactively, because a branded audit capability makes unlicensed clips easier for rights-holders to find and act on.
Third-order effects
- If measurement and enforcement keep converging in one company, the firm that decides what counts as a view will also decide what counts as authorized distribution — a structural conflict of interest regulators and advertisers would eventually have to weigh.
The trend: Audience-measurement firms are expanding from counting viewers to policing distribution, as video rights enforcement becomes a paid service layered onto ratings.