Nielsen Launches Public Info Portal 'Ratings Academy'

Nielsen has launched the 'Ratings Academy', an interactive online portal designed to improve public understanding of its audience measurement methods and the environment in which it operates.

The company says understanding audience viewership across platforms 'has never been more important', and the main goal of marketers - 'create strong messages and make sure those messages reach the right consumers' - hasn't changed in the 75 years it's been operating; but the media landscape has become far more complicated in recent years. Ratings 'play a pivotal role in providing both content creators and advertisers with a single data set' or 'currency... to confidently operate and evaluate opportunities to reach the right consumer'.

According to Nielsen, 'many [viewers] believe Nielsen is actually responsible for deciding which shows get cancelled', and concludes: there is 'a very clear need for increased understanding around ratings'.

Eric Solomon, SVP Product Leadership comments: 'Accurate, comprehensive measurement requires extensive, scientific and constantly evolving technologies and methodologies in order to deliver the level of quality the market expects. Given these complexities, we felt it was useful to give a peek 'under the hood' to provide insight into how ratings are derived. Ratings Academy does just that'.

The web site will build to include a series of modules covering different elements of the media landscape. The first module explores the overall media realm: more in-depth discussions of TV, Audio and Digital will follow.

Web site: http://ratingsacademy.nielsen.com .