A consortium of media companies that last month was seen as a rival to the Neilsen TV ratings group said today it is no such thing.
“The group, dubbed the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, or CIMM, cast itself as an effort to support third-party research into how audiences are consuming media across technology platforms and find new and more effective ways to measure audiences for advertisers in the digital age,” says Dow Jones report. Alan Wurtzel, president of research with NBC Universal, one of 14 firms in the group, spoke to reporters in a conference call.
TV networks and advertisers have said for years that Neilsen does not measure aucdiences accurately. With the spread of TV to online and mobile outlets, the lack of confidence has grown.
Any ideas new group comes up with, it says, will be transparent and made public.
The Los Angeles Times calls the news conference confusing, and points out that, “Missing from the list of industries involved is new media (no Google, no Yahoo), which is interesting because one of the things this organization stressed is that it wants to find a better way to measure media consumption online and on mobile devices.”
Firms involved in the group are Time Warner Inc., The Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc., CBS Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp. (owner of the Dow Jones newswire and The Wall Street Journal), Interpublic Group of Co.s, Omnicom Group Inc., WPP, AT&T Corp., Unilever and Procter & Gamble Co.
Neilsen, the coalition says, is welcome to make a proposal for joining them.