Look Out TV and Look Out Google: Nielsen Hopes Ratings Developed with Facebook Will Become the Currency For Online Ad Buys

Look Out TV and Look Out Google: Nielsen Hopes Ratings Developed with Facebook Will Become the Currency For Online Ad Buys: "Nielsen, [on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011] unveiled a push to turn the new online campaign ratings system it developed with Facebook into the online equivalent of the TV industry's so-called 'GRPs,' or gross ratings points, which are Madison Avenue's 'currency' for the multibillion TV advertising marketplace, " our good friend Joe Mandese reports for MediaPost.com.He continues, "The plan, which was explained during a briefing with investors codenamed 'Deep Dive,' includes a major push to coopt major advertisers and agencies."The article also says that the new system--called Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, or NOCR--"which has been in development for more than a year, utilizes Facebook's massive user base as its core sample, and Nielsen officially unveiled it and began pushing it aggressively during presentations and meetings at the Advertising Research Foundation's audience measurement conference in New York in June. Last week, Nielsen announced that it had received accreditation for the new ratings from the Media Rating Council, an important step toward becoming a genuine advertising currency."The MediaPost story notes that Steve Hasker, president of Nielsen's Watch Global Products division (formerly Media Research), told investors and Wall Street analysts during a conference call and Webcast Tuesday morning that "Nielsen was beginning with online display and video advertising campaigns, but he said the company plans to eventually 'scale' NOCR into social and mobile media. On a related noted, Hasker also disclosed that Nielsen had already perfected a way of incorporating ratings from people who watch TV shows via mobile smartphones and tablet computers into its new "extended panel" ratings, which currently include online viewing of TV shows by people in Nielsen's national TV audience sample."