Stuart Elliot wrote a piece in today’s NY Times entitled Tracking Viewers From TV to Computer to Smartphone in which he summarized the efforts being made by companies like AT&T, CBS, Discovery Communications, NBCUniversal, News Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Time Warner and Unilever to “measure consumption of video content in cross-platform ways, whether on TV, online or on mobile devices.” The results of two pilot tests will be revealed tomorrow at the Audience Measurement 7.0 conference in New York.
Kudos, this is an admirable initiative and a long time coming.
I’m hoping, however, that there are more compelling insights delivered tomorrow than the highlights cited by Mr. Elliot in today’s article.
“Both pilot tests had a similar major finding: that the growing viewership of video online and on mobile devices is not diminishing the appetite for watching television.” No kidding. This is a fact that has already been confirmed time and time again by multiple sources. TV still captures the lion’s share of media consumption. Got it.
The article went on to say that “Among the findings of the Arbitron test that may be surprising was that of all the people who viewed content on all three screens, the largest demographic group was not the youngest.” Again, no kidding. Younger consumers aren’t watching as much TV as their older counterparts. They’re simply consuming more content on two screens, not three.
There was one point that I fully embrace (color me just slightly cynical): ““all the media companies are trying to monetize their content platforms and to be fully monetized, they need to be measured.” Making more money. Yep. Got it.
But as I said, the effort being made by these companies is encouraging and should be applauded. Maybe the next pilot will try to get at the impact of cross-platform video consumption on sales. That might just be deserving of a standing ovation.
Northampton Consulting 