NBC Universal will publicly issue a TAMi (Total Audience Measurement Index) designed to measure the full range of cross-platform media consumption of the Beijing Olympic Games throughout the programmer’s 17 days of coverage.
The company’s various outlets will offer some 3,600 hours of programming Aug. 8-24, 2,200 of which will be live streaming broadband video.
In addition to traditional Nielsen ratings, the company will issue a daily TAMi measuring usage across all four platforms carrying Olympics programming -- network and cable television, online, video-on-demand and mobile. NBCU said the TAMi will give an indication of trends that develop on any one particular platform over the course of the Games.
In other facets of what NBCU called “the largest research project in its history,” it will:
• Conduct an online survey of 500 Olympics consumers per day, totaling 8,500 throughout the course of the event, to “help it understand the total multiplatform experience”;
• Join forces with IMMI to track the media behavior of a single consumer across all media platforms, with approximately 40 people carrying special IMMI cellular phones that pick up audio cues from the full range of NBCU platforms airing Olympics coverage; and
• Assemble a panel of media consumers and follow their behavior throughout the course of the Games.
“An event of this magnitude requires the biggest and most sophisticated research effort to measure it,” NBCU president of research Alan Wurtzel said in a statement. “The size and duration of the Olympics presents us with extraordinary opportunities to gather data on viewer behavior. Not only will we measure these Games in a way we’ve never done before, but we’ll also be able to gather data that help us to better understand the new-media consumer. At the end of the Olympics, no other research entity in the world will have as much knowledge on cross-platform usage as NBC Universal.”
