It’s certainly not our personal mission to make Google a cause célèbre, but we have a special place in our hearts for any company that challenges Nielsen Media Research, the bumbling audience analytics firm headed toward further catastrophe by David Calhoun, the former General Electric vice chairman. Google recently unveiled Google Ad Planner, a new framework that combines website metrics with media buying, which is supposed to replace the guesswork employed by companies like Nielsen and comScore, which use a complicated and mostly flawed mixture of audience panels and computer logging to tell clients how many people visit a website, and what type of people they are. Google, which collects metrics data itself, directly from websites that carry its tracking code, wants to challenge these industry leaders in a market they’ve long owned, and which media buyers have always had to rely on to know where best to spend their millions in ad buys. Except now that the service has debuted and the biggest media agencies have had a look, it appears Nielsen isn’t in much danger of no longer holding clients hostage.

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… the ad unit isn’t going anywhere. At 55 percent of all TV ad units, it still remains the go-to format, according to information-contriver Nielsen. Also: “Nielsen Co. says when viewers watch ads in prime time, the majority of messaging still comes in this tried-and-true package.” Which is sort of like saying: “When young people write letters and send them by snail mail, the majority of those notes are still written with Bic pens.”

Picking up from last week: The CW “has lost about 28 percent of its target audience of 18 to 34 year olds so far this season. Its ratings during this month’s ’sweeps’ period — the all-important measure upon which future advertising rates are set — are down about 22 percent.” That is, um, very bad news.

It’s also a chance for the network’s brass to deflect accusations that its numbers are pitiful. Rather, it’s the guys creating those numbers that have things wrong. Yes, when the reports are bad, blame Nielsen. We do!

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Nielsen continues its strategy of “buy the competition, don’t make a better product” by completing the $225 million purchase of IAG Research, the “consumer-engagement” firm. [B&C]

Nielsen, the fumbling audience measurement company notorious for snapping up the competition instead of building a better product for market, is doing the print industry a favor and promising not to get involved in measuring its audience. Even though its new “anywhere/anytime” initiative promised to be able to measure all media consumption, David Calhoun’s band of incompetents won’t be treading on FAS-FAX territory.

Not only that: Nielsen is looking to get out of print entirely.

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“In the weeks leading up to this prelude to the upfront advertising marketplace, the Media Rating Council quietly met, reviewed a crucial audit of Nielsen’s so-called C3 ratings system, and opted to withhold accreditation for what will be the currency for billions of dollars in TV advertising buys.”

Confused? Allow us to explain. You know those upfront presentations all the networks are hosting to solicit ad buys for the upcoming television season? Those billion dollar deals are based on Nielsen data that hasn’t passed muster for the second year in a row.

And then it gets worse.

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IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE IT’S TRUE Nielsen chief David Calhoun on innovation as a value: “We are still far off. We still have lots to do internally before we move to innovation.” [PC]

TNS, the London-based audience measurement firm that, along with TiVo, has provided the only real competition for giant Nielsen, just rejected a $1.87 billion buyout offer from WPP Group, owner of, among other things, the media and advertising agencies MindShare, Mediaedge:cia, MediaCom, Maxus, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, and Y&R. TNS’s decision to refuse the buyout, because they viewed it as a lowball offer, quickly prompted rumors that Nielsen was preparing its own offer, which would take yet another competitive player off the market. Sound familiar?

Do you ever get the feeling that Nielsen launches new business units as an excuse to issue press releases, which get picked up by the industry trades, and gives the company a rosier outlook than one might otherwise afford the unstable giant? [Mediapost]

Bet you thought local television networks decided which dates they were going to pull various stunts to draw in viewership spikes so they could charge more for 30 second spots than they should reasonably be allowed?

Not so! That’s the call of Nielsen, the audience measurement company that’s turned its near monopoly on viewer stats into an excuse to barely do its job.

Since time immemorial-ish, Nielsen has put one of its four-time-a-year sweeps weeks in February; the others come in November (beginning of fall TV season), May (end of fall TV season), and July (previously the death bed of primetime, now the summer reality TV season). But with the federal mandate to switch from analog to digital broadcasts by Feb. 19 of next year, Nielsen doesn’t want to trip up any homes who might not make the switch in time, leaving them WITHOUT TELEVISION ACCESS OMG.

So they’re moving February sweeps. To March. Now watch the Super Bowl and Academy Awards get all nervous and move their stunts to March, too.

For the first time in 78 years, The Hollywood Reporter is changing its logo. Oh! And also: The Nielsen trade is undergoing a “wholesale overhaul” of its whole brand. As you might expect, the relationship between publication and owner will grow closer, with the audience measurement firm providing THR with exclusive data, which only helps to serve Nielsen’s interests in overcharging clients for inaccurate data, as already seen with Adweek. So look for a relaunched website, with a terrible look, and a relaunched print edition, which is promised to be “much tighter, with fewer jumps-a quicker read,” which in industry parlance simply means “smaller.”

THE DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY IS A CLIENT Nielsen’s flawed data isn’t just being used to allocate billions of ad revenue dollars, but to keep tabs on terror threats. “If prescriptions for drugs used to treat infectious diseases begin to spike in a market, the Nielsen data can track how it spreads and whether it is taking on epidemic proportions or migrating in a way that might reveal a biological attack.” [MP]

Adweek editor Alison Fahey was named yesterday to the top spot of publisher/editorial director at the Nielsen Business Media brand, which doesn’t so much publish “weekly” as “whenever’s convenient.” She’s been editor there for 10 years and now, if Nielsen’s move to slash 4,000 jobs is any indication, her chief role in the coming weeks will be to finger who’s getting the ax. Happy hunting!

Nielsen Business Media, publisher of Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, and The Hollywood Reporter, is laying off an indeterminate number of editorial staffers; it’s not clear how much bloodshed there will be. (Not that it stopped Nielsen from

But expect more. While Nielsen may be a publisher facing the same ad dollar restraints as anybody else in the print realm, it’s long been rumored they’ve been looking to sell NBM, even though they deny it. And what’s the one thing a seller will do to make its properties look more attractive to a potential buyer? Cut costs across the line to boost margins.

Nielsen plans on measuring out-of-home television watchers, like those who catch The Biggest Loser at the gym, a college basketball game at a sports bar, or The Office while working late at, um, the office. It’s not clear how they’re having their samples record the data, since the plausibility of accurately recording what you watched while you’re sweating during a 5-mile treadmill run or getting hammered with your old frat buddies is, um, slim. Hopefully like your waistline is about to be.

Any article that speculates about the possibility of Nielsen’s downfall – in headline-ending-with-a-question-mark form – is a friend of ours. After all, we waste no fewer than 1,000 words a week on the subject. So there goes AdAge’s Brian Steinberg with “Can Nielsen Still Reign Supreme?” It’s a storied look at Nielsen’s 1950s beginnings to where it stands today: Trying to get its hands in every audience measurement medium possible, going beyond TV ratings and into video game and YouTube consumption. Providing this data to advertisers is big business, mostly because the P&Gs of the world spend billions without any absolute, concrete evidence its campaign messages turn into sales. It’s Nielsen’s job to convince them they’re doing the right thing.

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Nielsen says American ad spending was up a mere 0.6 percent in 2007. Meanwhile, competitor TNS says it jumped by only 0.2 percent. And Jack Myers, of JackMyers Media Business Report and ever the pragmatist, says the sky is not falling, neither company is accurate, and that media spends were up 1.9 percent and even as much as 3.1 percent.

Score one for Nielsen! They’ve put an end to an antitrust suit filed against them by erinMedia, which has tried, and failed, to encroach on Nielsen’s television audience measurement space. The two parties agreed to a settlement, avoiding a trial where that charged Nielsen with blocking competitors from entering the TV ratings space. Too bad, too, since a full-on courtroom drama would’ve seen testimony from ABC’s Henry DeVault, CBS’ David Poltrack, and NBC Universal’s Alan Wurtzel, as well as confidential documents, internal emails, and business agreements. [MP]

Since October 2007, Nielsen has been inflating the ad spends at about 20 local TV stations. That’s because they’ve been understating household coverage estimates, and overstating the coverage area of those stations, illegitimately awarding them more viewers than they actually had.

The error-plagued ratings company won’t say which networks were affected – we wouldn’t want angry advertisers to know exactly who to call – but they’re blaming it on “the methods it has used to calculate their coverage on satellite TV operators DirecTV and EchoStar, and that the problem was limited to the 26% of U.S. TV households that receive TV via the DBS provide.”

Smaller cable networks rely on this data to sell advertising, which means millions of dollars in ad budgets may have been spent in the wrong place.

Nielsen has given itself 60 days to figure out the exact cause of the problem and restate its numbers. But we all know how well they do with promised timelines.

Is Arianna Huffington’s group blog getting more traffic than the indefatigable Matt Drudge? Third-party sources who are often completely off base say yes! Nielsen Online says HuffPo snagged 3.7 millino unique visitors in February, to Drudge’s mere 3.4m. comScore’s numbers are tinier than Nielsen’s, but report the same trend: HuffPo’s 2.3m to Drudge’s 1.6m. Maybe Bill O’Reilly’s ambush tactics are working in her favor? [Boomtown]