Will Nielsen Help Marketers Find Magna Cum Ratings?

The college market has always been a tricky topic for marketers at cable and broadcast television networks across the nation.

The advantages of developing a significant viewer base amongst college students were always obvious….

• College students have always held strong influence over the viewing habits of their older parents and younger siblings.
• College students are much more prone to watch late night television obsessively; while the rest of the nation is dreaming of Eva Longoria (case in point: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart).
• College students are a highly coveted demo for marketers of everything from toothpaste to cell phones.

However, there has always been a major stumbling block in the prioritization of on campus viewers by television networks; the Nielsen Dilemma. Nielsen has historically ignored in-dorm viewers when calculating its television ratings. Even though college students are clearly a key target for television’s advertisers, they haven’t really pumped much into the lifeblood of television networks, who rely on Nielson ratings to determine their advertising rates.

This seems like it is all about to change. It has come to our attention that Nielsen Media Research will soon begin measuring viewership in college dorms as reported by Warner Brothers last week. It seems that Nielson installed meters in college dorms about two years ago as a pilot to determine what impact the in-dorm viewer base would have on national ratings. The findings and resulting new policy will undoubtedly spur many all-nighters in the marketing departments of broadcast and cable networks everywhere.

It is estimated that the impact of Nielson’s new policy will likely increase the white hot 18-34 demo size by about 5%. What does this mean for overall ratings? A not so sophomoric .3 to 1.2 share increase opportunity for individual television programs

All of this news may seem a bit underwhelming in the face of TiVo induced ‘commercial-skipping’ or the increasing digital distribution of television content amongst the “iPod Generation”. The figures are hard to ignore though: college students, with all of their social networking both online and off, are still watching television nearly 4 hours of TV daily according to Nielson. Moreover, most college students do not yet have a DVR or a video iPod .

The obvious winners from this are youth targeted cable networks including MTV and Comedy Central who can finally justify their rampant viewership amongst dorm rooms dwellers across America. One not so obvious winner will likely be ESPN as “SportsCenter” has ranked near the top of Student Monitor’s “most watched program’ list for years.

Extra credit is about to be rewarded and this time the students are filling out the report card. Stay tuned…

Matt Britton is managing partner of New York-based promotions agency Mr. Youth LLC.