Charter Communications and Nielsen to Measure Cable Viewing

03/21/2008

Cable operator Charter Communications is teaming up with the Nielsen Co. to measure the cable television viewing habits of 330,000 Los Angeles-area households using digital set-tops. The information derived from the set-tops will enable Charter to provide extensive household and demographic reports for local television markets.

Pressure from Advertisers to Track Television Habits

Nielsen, and the television industry as a whole, have been under increasing pressure from advertisers to provide the same type of viewership tracking that Internet advertising offers. Nielsen responded to the pressure by advocating the use of digital set-tops.

Discovery and ESPN were the first cable networks to start tracking viewership with different technology, but Charter Communications is the first cable operator to participate in Nielsen’s set-top service.

Charter Committed to Precision in Measuring Viewership

In a joint press release from Nielsen and Charter Communications, Jim Heneghan, senior vice president of Charter’s advertising sales says, “Charter is committed to improving the precision of local market measurement. By working with Nielsen, we are ensuring that our advertiser and agency clients get the most reliable data possible to evaluate their media buys.”

Privacy Concerns Abated

In measuring viewership, a major concern among cable companies has been their commitment to protect the privacy of their subscribers. Thus Charter will provide the measurement data to Nielsen in anonymous form and Nielsen’s reports - based on Charter’s information - will contain only anonymous and aggregated data.

“At a time of rapid technological change in the television industry, Nielsen is inventing new ways to measure how people watch television,” said Jed Meyer, senior vice president of Nielsen DigitalPlus, in a statement. “Through these studies, we will provide Charter with new insights on the consumption of all digital video. At the same time, we will be investigating the potential of digital set-top boxes and the data they generate to enhance our existing audience-measurement services.”