Neilsen Introduces New Way To Measure Gamer Metrics 27
GameDaily reports on a couple of new ways that Neilsen is trying to stay with the times. Game usage and tracking have always been hard for them, and they're rolling out two new strategies to consumers. The first requires participation on the part of developers: a 'tag' that can be built into software to register usage with the Neilsen folks. An initial attempt at this was tried in 2005, and never got off the ground. They're now trying again. The other is a bit more clever, and is usable on multiple forms of entertainment. The blog 'We Can Fix That with Data' did some research into the organization's 'Portable People Meters': "The Portable People Meter, developed by Arbitron Inc., is a pager-sized device that is carried by a representative panel of television viewers. It automatically detects inaudible codes that broadcasters embed in the audio portion of their programming using encoders provided by BBM and Arbitron. At the end of each day, the survey participants place the meters into base stations that recharge the devices and send the collected codes to BBM for tabulation. The Portable People Meter can measure exposure to any electronic media, which has audio that can be encoded - television, cable, and radio, even cinema advertising and in-store media."
What about TV (Score:2)
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Yeah, we -do- seem to need meaningless numbers to validate our existance. It's wired into who we are. I'm about the most non-competitive person I know, and I still feel the need to 'win' from time to time.
But that really has nothing to do with these ratings, does it? These are for personal edification, they are to measure the success of shows/games so that networks know what is popular and what is not. IF the system worked ri
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Their new technology (referenced in the article as "PeopleMeter") allows them to passively monitor all the audible marks that you hear during the day. They listen for encoded signals in the audible streams of radio stations, television stations, retail outlets and (now) video games. This lets them count how many eyes (or ears, as it were) are on a specific media stream at a given time which, in turn, sets the "demand" for the advertising market. World of Warcraft will be going up against Howard Stern and
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Hahaha. I can imagine a nationwide campaign to fuck up ratings. THAT WOULD BE SO MUCH FUN.
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(inside head)
"your playing to much BF2...you want to watch American Idol..."
'But no, I dont'
"yes you do, studies show more people are watching Idol right now"
'still, I do-'
"WATCH"
(a splitting headache ensues, guy goes to get a drink of water, and decides to watch TV...)
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I'm actually more curious to see if MP3/AAC encoding is going to whack these "inaudible" audio codes out of the stream. That could have a nasty effect on their tracking attempts for several types of media.
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Unfortunately, there are already services out there that allow gamers to "share" what games they are playing in real time (i.e. "User Satanicpuppy is currently playing: Galactic Civilizations II"), so their online gamer friends can keep up with what they're doing.
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That's not entirely true... It's definitely true for television-only habits, but the PeopleMeter extends beyond that.
Neilson (and Arbitron) are moving into new markets. Markets that Tivo, digital cable, and satellite receivers cannot tap into without significant infrastructure changes. Additionally, they will (supposedly) be able to gauge how many viewers are actually at the set, and not in the kitchen making a sandwich (assuming that surveyors carry their mobile receivers around with them).
The real
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Nielsen does more than TV and radio ratings. It has lots of supermarket data, and a host of other things that it can correlate with different sources, all of which is *not* publicly available information. You're the umptieme person I've met or heard of that claims Nielsen is outdated (or that they can start a company that will replace Nielsen), but your perception of what Nielse
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TV is already their slave, and television isn't exactly a growth industry these days in terms of broadcasters and stations. They are branching out to try and increase revenues.
Neilsen? (Score:1, Informative)
Huh. (Score:1)
I've always wanted to get paid for my television watching habits (come on Nielsen, what about the demographic of people who watches less than 5 minutes of TV a day?!), but been turned off by having to keep a paper account of those... it would be neat if it was automated.
Old tech (Score:4, Funny)
If so, those have been around since at least the late 50s...
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First error (Score:2)
An opt-in system that requires people to remember to carry around a pager-sized device will never be "representative".
Much better statistics (Score:2)
Much better statistics and much more relevant to gamers.
Interesting but Useless (Score:2)
Heck, you'd probably end up with some enthusiast writing a virus to change the signal
dbl fisting (Score:1)