Indiantelevision.com Team

(18 October 2007 4:00 pm)

MUMBAI: ESPN and NielsenConnect are collaborating on a multi-platform strategy, which the former hopes will help answer the question that every media company with a branded website has to face - What does the website audience do for the existing on-air entity?

The tie-up is believed to be NielsenConnect's biggest deal since the division was formed earlier this year.

ESPN senior VP of research and sales development Artie Bulgrin ays, "What we want to know, is how our viewers watch the network across various platforms and for example, whether promos on ESPN.com are driving viewers to watch programs on their TV sets."

The deal is the first deployment of Nielsen's TV/Internet Convergence Panel, a household sample being set up to measure TV and internet use within the same home, using Nielsen NetRatings NetSite meters.

"At the end of the day, we can’t tell you what the three screens (Internet, mobile, on-air) deliver,” said Bulgrin. "We need that to establish confidence for the advertisers. This is about gaining insights that were never before possible."

NielsenConnect CEO Jon Mandel says, "It's plug and play time at Nielsen. ESPN content runs across all media and NielsenConnect is the first research service that measures all media and has the flexibility to combine it with ESPN's proprietary research. This will give ESPN's advertisers the ability to see how different mixes of ESPN properties drive their sales."