We are all familiar with the challenges in accurately measuring audience behavior.  Anyone who has placed a schedule knows that it takes more and more spots to achieve GRP goals.  Below is an excerpt from an Ad Age article that sums up the state of audience measurement.

Look, we’re in the Stone Age now.  We’re letting 115 million homes be guided by 11,000, which I think in this day and age is ridiculous.  At some point, we are going to take the set-top boxes or DVR info, and at least we have the millions at that point instead of 11,000.  Will some of the data be skewed upscale?  Yeah.  Is there a way of figuring out how to make it more reliable?  Maybe downscale it somehow.  If a company can come up with some kind of metric using DVR data that somehow makes it more reliable across the U.S., you would think they’d make a fortune.

Larry Novenstern
Executive Vice President, Managing Director, NewCast@Optimedia