Nielsen Minutes Available from This Month

Nielsen Media Research has confirmed that it will begin providing commercial-minute ratings as early as the end of this month. Clients will get an updated version of the firm's NPOWER software on Jan 29th to perform their own minute-by-minute analyses, and Nielsen's own All Minute Data File will follow in April.

The new version of NPOWER will allow clients who want to develop their own detailed, customized commercial minute ratings to do so for any interval of DVR playback, ranging from one minute delayed viewing to seven days. Data will be available back to the beginning of the first week of the January 2007 measurement interval.

On April 24th, the same capability will be added to Nielsen's All Minute Data File, which allows clients to download Nielsen's core data directly into their own and third party software systems. This data will be available back to the beginning of the first week of the April 2007 measurement interval.

Both options will allow minute-by-minute ratings of national commercials by demographic group for all national television programs, including DVR playback at any interval up to seven days.

A more standardised ratings format, the new Average Commercial Minute electronic data file, will be available from May 31. This provides an average rating for the commercial minutes in each TV program with data starting from the beginning of the first week of the May 2007 measurement interval. Users can look at live viewing data only or can add DVR playback within any of five time intervals: playback on the same day, within 1 day, 2 days, 3 days or 7 days.

All broadcast, cable and syndicated programming will all be included in the electronic data file, which for the months of May-August 2007 will be labelled as 'evaluation' data and made available to clients at no charge.

Sara Erichson, Nielsen General Manager of National Services, says the plan is 'based on extensive consultation with clients to gain insight into what commercial minute ratings information will best meet the needs of the advertising and television industries.'

Nielsen Media Research's home page is at www.nielsenmedia.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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