ESPN and Nielsen to measure how consumers interact with different media

ESPN, Inc. and The Nielsen Company announced a ground-breaking collaboration to
measure how consumers use media across a variety of platforms including television,
the Internet and digital mobile devices.

With its TV network available in 93 million households and approximately 18
million unique Web users per month, ESPN will work with Nielsen, to develop a
new model for cross-media measurement. This will enable buyers and sellers of
television advertising to understand more completely the interaction of new
digital platforms with traditional television viewing.

“This ESPN Nielsen initiative will forge new ground in cross-media measurement
solutions, allow us to further understand user behavior and provide valuable
insight for our advertisers,” said Artie Bulgrin, senior vice president,
research and sales development.

“ESPN is a true multimedia company, with a mission to serve sports fans
any time, anywhere and via any device. That makes it a great fit for our
capabilities which provide unique insights into the fast changing habits of
today’s media users,” said Jon Mandel, chief executive officer of
NielsenConnect, the newly formed service group that brings together Nielsen’s
full range of information-gathering and insight capabilities. “I’m
particularly thrilled that ESPN is interested in learning how their content
drives advertisers’ business.”

The ESPN-Nielsen initiative will have three main parts. It will feature the
first deployment of Nielsen’s TV/Internet Convergence Panel, the new integrated
sample of households being assembled by Nielsen to measure TV and Internet use within the same home. The
initiative will also link together research data from Nielsen Mobile and other
measurement sources to evaluate the cross-media usage. Nielsen will also
provide the opportunity for several ESPN advertisers to link in and study
insights about their advertising on ESPN platforms.

Nielsen’s
TV/Internet Convergence Panel will provide the first real insight into how
people experience television and Internet, including streaming media, in their
daily lives. Panelists will have their television viewing measured by Nielsen’s
People Meters and their Internet usage measured by Nielsen//NetRatings’
Internet metering technology. The sample will be assembled from a combination
of sources, including newly recruited homes and existing TV panelists who are
leaving the National People Meter television sample.

For ESPN, the panel
will measure, among other things the impact of TV promotions on driving people
to the Internet and of Internet promotions driving users to watch ESPN
programs. The panel will measure the number of hours of TV and Internet usage
per week, in total, and by time of day for any specific demographic or viewer
type and they will measure simultaneous media usage across various
combinations, such as viewing TV and streaming.

Also as
part of the initiative, Nielsen will link its television and Internet
measurement to the ESPN Sports Poll, a syndicated tracking survey of

U.S. adults and
teenagers that monitors general fan profiles, viewing habits, event attendance
and sports industry trends. This data “fusion” will allow ESPN to
analyze TV viewing and Internet usage against specific variables from Sports
Poll or a combination of variables, such as ESPN’s ratings by program among NFL
fans who visit NFL.com.

To measure
the impact of ESPN content on mobile devices such as cell phones, Nielsen will
also fuse its existing TV/Internet fusion product with data from its Telephia
service, which measures mobile web and mobile video usage.

Once the
fusion is complete, ESPN will be able to conduct a number of analyses,
including measuring the unduplicated reach of ESPN’s traditional television programming,
ESPN.com and ESPN mobile video.
ESPN can
measure the overlap across the platforms (i.e. what percent of ESPN users use
all three platforms or what percent are both TV and mobile, etc.) and be able to
illustrate the demographic and market break composition of various combinations
of audiences.