GregHay.com

Nielsen, please listen, I want you to make a change or take a fresh look at web measurement. Give me something that I can use for media planning that makes more sense for the way the web actually works than what you’re giving me now. Currently you tell me who is on what site by applying an antiquated method of measurement modeled after the TV thinking that when a show is “on” the audience is there and thus that’s how you report it. The web is always “on” and you’ve shown you have no clue when I “watch” and have not taken the time to address that the web is a real-time experience and users don’t have to tune in when a content provider tells them to.

So, this is what I want. Tell me where my demographic goes throughout the day. There are reasons Cartoon Network runs Taco Bell ads during Adult Swim, to get stoners thinking about it. Why can’t you tell me where 35-54 year-old women go during the day? Or males 18-24? Use the panel, follow the group.

I think the ultimate win for online media planners is going to be when groups of people can be identified and targeted by how they move and navigate the web, NOT by who left a footprint by visiting a site at some point in time.

Before OneRiot switched gears and became a weird search engine, they had an amazing browser widget called Me.dium. It allowed users to see where their friends were in real-time and navigate to wherever that was by just clicking their avatar. It was genius. For me, I was totally sold when I spent an afternoon watching stay-at-home moms go on a shopping tour of the web with a blogger hosting, supplying the links and leading the chat in the plug-in. It was probably the coolest experience I had as a researcher; it was real time feedback on products, it was calls to action via commerce and best of all it was watching how a network would react to a shared web experience.

So, that got me thinking, how could this be looked at on a grand scale? How could we watch the web like the Me.duim tool did? Why continue to use metrics in an archaic way that TV dictates? Nielsen, switch. Show me what the crowd is doing right now. Do more men visit EPSN.com on their lunch break or after work? Would ads for iTunes music make more sense at night when people are at home on their machines or during the day when they get the impulse at work? Are more women on Amazon.com during the day and men at night? Build it, we will follow.

I hope someone out there is listening and taking notes…. no matter what time of day they find this.

(Full disclosure, I was with Nielsen Online over the course of the last year and a half in a research position)