Well… It’s done. Nielson survey rating team has picked my little household to better understand the viewing habits of a 40 year old engineer and his wife. They give out little gift certificate worth 50 Bucks ever so often and what not. They also wanted place software on our computers regarding urls. My wife immediately said “no way”. I wonder what kind of porn she is into… Anyway anyone else ever have the Nielson experience?
I have a family member that worked for them for years, and I’ve had to interface with them professionally. (they have modules that go in some cable boxes.)
Even if you’re not a Nielson family you may have your viewership monitored… cable operators can pull this data.
[quote=spdrun]I dated someone whose family was in a Nielson household, about 15 years ago. It wasn’t tracked on paper even then, but rather via a set top box.[/quote]
Same here. I lived in a house with Nielson tracking our viewing habits through the cable box. This was back in the 80s.
Just finished up last year with Arbitron (just bought by Nielsen) meters. Tracks radio and TV with audio frequencies with pagers for each family member. No web tracking. Mostly watch Netflix so not sure why they didn’t boot us, but I guess it’s hard for them to get Piggington crowd. Believed we were picked because I filled out a couple of surveys year before. Figured would put all money in son’s account so it’s his first job. He needs to keep track of pager, charge it nightly, etc. so it’s good that way.
It’s kind of cool to have favorite radio TV shows count and hide pager when NBC ticks you off for not carrying live Olympics, etc.
We were a Nielson family for a while when I was a kid. Musta been the late 60’s. I remember them putting some kind of device on the TV (we had one TV and seven kids). I remember someone saying not to alter our viewing habits because of it. We were bewildered by that. Like we’re gonna not watch Bugs Bunny.
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