Cellphones are rapidly becoming ubiquitous, and Nielsen, the longtime monitor of television consumption, wants in. Nielsen said Wednesday that it had agreed to acquire Telephia, a private company based in San Francisco, for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 1998, Telephia has become one of the most respected sources of data about cellphone use - tracking consumers phone calling, mobile Web surfing, video viewing and just about everything else.
Nielsen has been building mobile tracking products on its own, but Telephia will greatly advance its ability to monitor media consumption on every screen, Nielsen executives said. "We follow content wherever it goes across all platforms, and this is a really significant step forward in measuring content across mobile platforms," said Susan Whiting, executive vice president of Nielsen. Today in Technology Media Warner Music and Sony BMG start digital music venture in Russia Proposed accord would give Murdoch broad power over editorial staffing at The Wall Street Journal Bear Stearns fund chief struggles to fend off the hordes Cellphones are becoming a top priority among media executives who think consumers will soon watch more of their television, read more of their news and interact with magazines using their phones.
Cellphone carriers are promoting their video content offerings, often in partnership with media companies, and on Friday, Apple introduces its long-anticipated iPhone, which will focus as much on media consumption as it will on calls. "I m sure it will have an effect on the consumer market because the designs that Apple introduces and the functionality always seems to be replicated by other consumer technology companies," said George Kliavkoff, the chief digital officer of NBC Universal. Telephia s leading products provide research about market share in the telecommunications industry, performance quality in wireless networks and consumer satisfaction with phones.
Telephia s consumer research is based on surveys of different people each time, in contrast to Nielsen, which monitors what the same people watch over time. Telephia, however, holds patents on some techniques for media consumption tracking on the cellphone that are similar to Nielsen s approach in television, said Sid Gorham, president and chief executive of Telephia. With the deal, Nielsen will gain telecommunications companies as customers.
However, "instead of calling themselves phone companies," businesses like AT T and Verizon "will very quickly call themselves media companies," Gorham said. "The boundary between telecom and media is blurring very quickly," he added. Verizon has advertising in circulation for its V Cast video service on phones that says, in part: "Your TV is ringing.
" Until recently, Telephia s data was more useful to the cellphone carriers than to advertising agencies, said Courtney Acuff, a director at Denuo, a division of the Publicis Groupe that focuses on future technologies. Acuff said consumer brand companies wanted to understand the full picture of where people spend their time - not just bits and pieces about each medium. "The biggest deficit in the market is that mobile is being looked at in isolation.
But it is not happening in isolation. In fact, multiple screens is the norm, and the research does not reflect that." Nielsen intends to build a fuller picture of media consumption, including cellphone use.
Last year it began tracking how people spend their time with video and other media, wherever it occurs. NetRatings, a division of Nielsen, tracks online consumption, and Nielsen is tracking more viewing outside the home and even on the television screens that are popping up in big-box stores. Nielsen created a new service called Nielsen Wireless in October that has been developing tools to track cellphone use.
This month, it announced its first mobile product, Mobile Vector, which will begin releasing data next month about cellphone users. The data will be linked to information from the families in Nielsen s national People Meter television panel. Media executives say they want tracking technologies that are more comprehensive.
"Any technology that increases measurement across any platform, including mobile, is of great interest to us," Kliavkoff of NBC said. "It helps our advertisers appreciate the full value they re getting." Back to top Cellphones are rapidly becoming ubiquitous, and Nielsen, the longtime monitor of television consumption, wants in.
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