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Originally Posted by nunnehi
That's bizarre, to me. How could VOD be difficult to track? The cable or satellite company has a pipeline to a server that plays the show. It seems to me this would literally be THE easiest thing to track, technically. Every time someone hits play on a VOD program, movie, etc., it should just send a click through (anonymously) to a database that says that it was played.
It's easy to tell if the episode was initiated/started for the cable company through their head-end/set top box relationship. That data needs to be collected by the cable company, then shared with the Network before sales can be achieved. Having no independent measurement makes ad sales more challenged.
Also, while you can tell when an episode was started, there isn't "minute-by-minute" viewing data like there is for live TV - without an agreed upon viewing metric, it's harder to sell advertising - this is a marketplace issue, not a technology issue.
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If it's actually claimed to be difficult to do this possibly speaks to other, more nefarious, actions of the whoevers that be (Nielsen/cable/satellite companies?). I believe you could get an extremely accurate nationwide viewing number through VOD, just by the actual way that it operates through a box. I think it would be harder to do online tracking of viewing habits, and I don't think that seems that hard either, although it's not nearly as centralized for most programs as VOD is. True DVR tracking seems like it would be practically impossible.
You should write a letter to Nielsen
Their extended screen metrics are not that great.
I think what you're alluding to is that cable companies via STB (set top box) data have a ton of information on the consumer's viewing habits. This is true, but it's not an industry accepted sales currency. And the Networks would need to be fully partnered with cable companies to have access to that granular data, or there needs to be a measurement company (with partnerships with cable companies) to get that data. Rentrak is such a company, but they've only been in business for some time and not long enough to have developed an industry accepted sales currency.
So again, not a technology issue, but a market issue. (And for a while it was actaully a technology issue - dynamically inserting ads into VOD programming is not an easy technical feat.) And all the Networks are working to make a market in VOD ad sales. It will just take time like it does to develop any new market.
BTW - as a comment to your Hulu thoughts - the problem for an advertiser on Hulu is that they don't exactly know where their commercial will air - I believe advertisers buy "genres", and based on the On-Demand nature of Hulu, it's hard to know precisely when their commercial will loop-in. That's why in the early days of Hulu you saw more niche/risque ads - that is not what Hulu preferred - it's the only advertisers they could get.
So when you think through what an advertiser is getting on buying on Hulu, vs. on a live air TV show - you can see how much more of a preference an advertiser has airing their commercial in a known time period/series, and the value of that preference is commensurate to how much they will pay to air commercials on that platform (if they choose to air on that platform at all).
Last edited by Aloysius; 11-01-2011 at 01:19 PM.