The Nielsen ratings is one of the best known tools for tracking television viewership and audience composition. This is widely popular across the world and is taken as the benchmark when it comes to assessing the popularity of television programs.
However, with mobile TV getting prominence over the past few years, there does not exist a standard to track viewership from the mobile devices. Motorola seems to have taken the first step as a recent patent filed by the company shows.
In this filing, titled “Method for Collecting Usage Information on Wireless Devices for Ratings Purposes”, the inventors write about a technology that will enable them to assess viewership ratings from mobile devices. The inventors explain
“An illustrative system and method are described herein that enable the collection of information from mobile devices that are used to receive broadcasts of television or video programming over a wireless network. According to one illustrative embodiment, one or more ratings servers collect information associated with the use of one or more mobile devices to view broadcast video or programming. The collected information can then be used to calculate ratings.”
We are not sure if Nielsen already methods in place to track mobile TV viewership. A CNET article that dates back to 2005 talks about Nielsen working on something similar though it is not clear if Nielsen’s technology, if it exists, would be regarded prior art.
What do you think?