metrics, be careful what you wish for

10 Dec, 2009 • posts i've written • 2 comments

Nielsen’s been hard at work improving their already massively popular online metrics system, the @Plan.

From Nielsen, regarding the current system:

@Plan, the leading target-marketing platform for Internet media planning, buying and selling, delivers the industry’s most comprehensive profiling of ad-supported Web sites today. With more than 3,600 profile points and 19 profile categories, @Plan reveals wide-ranging details about the U.S. adult online population, capturing everything from basic demographics to in-depth lifestyle and buying preference data.

According to AdAge, Nielsen announced it would be tripling the number of sites included in the data, and it would shift from questionnaires to electronic tracking of user traffic patterns all in the effort of producing more accurate and granular results for their clients.

Well… it looks like it may be too accurate.

From the article,

Multiple publishers passed along data they consider suspect from the @Plan system. Among them: The old data said 76% of FoxSports.com audiences had watched a game on TV in the previous week. The new numbers say just 50%. The old @Plan data had 11.1% of MTV.com visitors identified as students; the new data say just 4.5%.

It gets more striking: Under the old system, 32% of People.com visitors also read the magazine. The new data say just 8% had read the magazine the prior week.

Not to worry, Nielsen has delayed the launch of the new @Plan product in order to reassess the platform based on the complaints of their highest paying accounts, and in order to get the system right.