Netflix may not want to open up its audience ratings to industry onlookers – but that doesn’t mean measurement houses aren’t trying to put some numbers on the video behemoth’s growth regardless.
“We are actually going to be able to have measurement for content that’s playing on Netflix because we have the audio tags – we can measure the audio signature,” Nielsen agency solutions MD David Hohman tells Beet.TV in this panel interview. “If we had the audio signature for Netflix(-commissioned) content, we can measure those as well… for any device.”
Announced in November, Nielsen’s in-home audience panel measurement devices can now listen out for sonic fingerprints in shows viewers are watching over streaming services. That’s fine for shows licensed from suppliers which use the fingerprints, but Netflix’s own-produced shows so far do not. “The problem in the industry – there are so many viewpoints – things being measured in different way – there is no consistency,” Hohman says.
“The difficult piece of that is, the technology doesn’t exist in all things – you’ve got specific broadcasters or cable owners that don’t want to be measured. Netflix wants to tell you how successful their programs are. Netflix doesn’t want to be measured. Right now, it doesn’t matter because it’s not taking ad revenue.”
He was interviewed at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat by Furious Corp founder Ashley J. Swartz. The Beet Retreat ’15 was sponsored by AOL and Videology. Please find additional videos from the event here.
