TNS Moves to Challenge Nielsen With New DirecTV Metrics

In the latest and most significant effort yet to challenge Nielsen's dominance in the TV measurement business, TNS Media Research will use set-top box data from 100,000 DirecTV households around the country to mine new information about television viewing patterns. ielsen has long been the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to measuring how many people watch TV, churning out data that marketers use to target consumers. But the move by TNS, expected to be announced as early as today, is one of several in the past year aimed at changing that. Companies including TNS and TiVo have been taking a run at Nielsen with new set-top box data that offers second-by-second information about TV programs and commercials. hese companies believe their data fill gaps in Nielsen's offerings. Nielsen, for example, gets its information from an audience panel that includes about 14,000 households nationwide. TNS's new service, dubbed TNS DirecTView, will study more than seven times that number of homes. The larger size of the panel makes the research more stable and allows subscribers to the service to get information about smaller channels, say TNS and DirecTV.
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