NBCU Gears Up Winter Olympics Research

US broadcaster NBC Universal (NBCU) is planning to conduct research into consumer cross-platform behaviour during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.

In 2008, the firm used the Beijing Olympics as a testing ground for a more 'rounded' measurement of media consumption, covering a wide variety of media.

This year, NBCU will partner with research agencies to create what it describes as 'statistically projectable single source measurement' of TV and Internet use.

Using data from Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPM) media measurement service, as well as Internet data from comScore and Omniture, NBCU will measure TV and Internet viewing simultaneously.

In addition, the firm will partner with IMMI to track Olympic exposure across all media platforms including TV, online and mobile devices.

To track social media use, NBCU will use Keller Fay's TalkTrack to measure Olympic word-of-mouth feedback.

In addition, it will use second-by-second set-top box data from TiVo to measure audience retention of Olympic programming and advertising.

'No other media event gives us such an enormous amount of content that is consumed by so many people, across so many different platforms, for such a long period of time,' stated Alan Wurtzel, President of Research at NBCU.

Web site: www.nbcuni.com .