Want to ask Nielsen about this campaign

Don't totally understand the why and wherefore of this seemingly pricey campaign that Nielsen is running for justasknielsen.com. Saw it first in The New York Times' Olympic-focused Play magazine this Sunday—I believe it was the sole sponsor—and again this morning opposite an NYT story about the mind games that take place in the swimming pre-race room. The campaign is actually a lot of fun, since it involves a bunch of pop-culture questions that Nielsen can answer, but it's also really consumer-friendly, and I don't think Nielsen is trying to attract John Q. Public with this campaign. Mousing over the questions revelas the answer. (BTW, the answer to this question pictured here is True.)

'Mediaweek' quietly launches its new site

My former colleagues at Mediaweek have taken a different approach than Adweek to promoting the launch of their new site, by almost not promoting it. It launched yesterday and, from an interface perspective, it looks much like the Adweek.com site, which, you may recall, I do like better than its predecessor. The video above explains the goals of the site, and is unapologetic about the advantages of being owned by Nielsen in a data-driven business. While some people feel uncomfortable about that connection, I'm not among them, as long as Mediaweek doesn't suck up when it reports on its parent company. I don't think it does. Get over it people--the data-sharing is what's called synergy.

And the score is: Adweek, 19 Nielsen mentions; Ad Age, 16

Ever since the job description for the Adweek editor's post started circulating last week, a tempest has been brewing over whether the ties between the Adweek magazines and their corporate overlords at Nielsen are growing. This because the job posting touts that the magazine is carrying exclusive Nielsen data. And while the debate started fairly reasonabily, it's gotten increasingly silly in the blogosphere. (Yes, for those of you who don't know, I used to work at Adweek.)The magazine group, which includes Mediaweek and Brandweek, hasn't shied away from critical coverage of the conversion to C3, the new ratings currency that was adopted for upfront negotiations last year. You can browse the database and find stories critical of Nielsen's C3 ratings currency, carrying headlines such as "Buyers Debate C3 Ratings" and "Buyers Remorse: Want Make Goods, Not Scatter." The debate reached its silliest in a post at psfk.com, which trumpets "AdWeek Mentions Parent Company Services Up To 3 or 4 Times A Day”—and then shows a search of the Adweek database which divulges recent Nielsen mentions. I’ve countered with the visual above—which is a screen grab of competitor Ad Age’s recent mentions of Nielsen. Going back a week, I discovered that while Adweek mentioned Nielsen 19 times, Ad Age mentions the company 16 times, and if anyone writes in to say that proves that Adweek is biased toward Nielsen than they … well let’s not go there. With that close a margin, it probably wouldn't take very long to find a week in which Ad Age mentioned Nielsen more than Adweek. Any situation such as the ownership of the Adweek books by Nielsen warrants keeping an eye out for a loss of editorial autonomy, but so far, we’re not there. There’s a reason Nielsen gets mentioned a lot by Adweek and Ad Age, and that’s because it’s Nielsen. Nielsen has a lot of data. Advertising trade magazines print a lot of data. Period.

Why didn't someone else cut a deal with Nielsen?

Here's the thing I don't understand about the alliance announced today by Google and Nielsen to, as The New York Times put it, "give advertisers a more vivid and accurate snapshot than ever before of how many people are viewing commercials on a second-by-second basis, and who those people are." The thing I don't get is: why did everybody wait around and then let Google—which , on the surface, doesn't have that much of a vested interest in TV measurement—do it? Initially, Google and Nielsen will only be gathering data from some set-top boxes in Echostar's DISH network, but I'm sure that won't calm fears that Google is out to "get" the ad and media industries. Not surprisingly, the Times' version of events (it broke the story), is the most emailed of today's business stories so far—probably being shared by people, who, rather than viewing this as an honest attempt at developing deeper TV measurement, see it as the latest evidence that Google's world domination is at hand. The people in the media industry have no one to blame but themselves for not being first to do this. As it was when ABC first announced it would make its shows available for download on iTunes, expect a rash of similar deals to follow.