Guest: Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
Host: Jennifer Jones

Jennifer Jones
This is Jennifer Jones at the Dow Jones VentureWire consumer Technology Ventures Conference and I am here today interviewing Larry Gerbrandt who is General Manager and Senior Vice-President of Nielsen Analytics. So, welcome to the Podcast Larry.

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
Thank you, it's a pleasure to chat with you today.

Jennifer Jones
My first question is, can you give me some sense about what you guys are seeing as it relates to analytics as -- we are just focused on say Podcasts and blogs.

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
Sure. Well it's -- we are actually just getting started in a major initiative at Nielsen called, 'Anytime Anywhere', to measure the usage of media --anytime it's used, anywhere it's used. I am actually coming out with a report on broadband video called -- it's redefining World Wide Web to whatever, whenever, wherever and that's really the way consumers are beginning to use entertainment and information out there. We are just starting our first panel this call with initially 400 iPods that have been wired up and with the appropriate software, to be able to start tracking what they are doing with those devices and it includes Podcasts, it will include pretty much anything that they are watching or listening to on those devices. And we'll begin tracking those habits and those patterns and along with everything that Nielsen does, it's a demographic panel as well.

It's not just pure usage, I mean in theory, you can sort of derive that by looking at a server log. What advertisers want to know is, who is doing it and how does the usage differ between men and women, between the different demographics, age demographics as well as other demographic breaks? So that's our first initiative is this 400 iPod panel and our next major initiative in this space is going to start rolling out within the next year where we are going to be doing ratings in Nielsen Homes and tracking the video that they are watching on their PCs along with of course what they are watching on their TVs. So, that's a major initiative in the company between Nielsen Media Research and Nielsen NetRatings which specifically focuses on what's happening on the PC.

Jennifer Jones
So, what do you think you'll find out?

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
Until we actually start tracking, we won't know what the data looks like and it's I think based on the fact, what we know about the broadband household. We know that its younger, we know that its more affluent, we know it tends in terms of usage tends to skew a little bit mail -- so, all of those things are actually good from an advertising stand point because it's harder to reach younger users and it's harder the more upscale or more valuable men tend to be harder to reach through media advertising than women. So, that would be sort of my gut instinct and I think we will see that a lot of the new technology usage probably also skews more routine.

Jennifer Jones
So, in terms of how you then disseminate this information to add agencies or to companies that want to be able to use it to obviously make smart marketing decisions, how does that work?

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
I mean Nielsen is in the business of licensing its research to end users such as agencies, advertisers and content creators, or content distributors. Those historically are client-based and they are the ones who actually sort of push us to say look we, we are now ready to pay you, to collect this data and license it from you on an on-going basis and then its our job to create the panels and collect the research in a standardized way and in a way that they are used to getting the data and have it validated and then of course its always controversy between one constituency and another that feels that they maybe underrepresented in a particular approach. But that's what keeps the business interesting and all of us honest.

Jennifer Jones
So, in terms of major challenges, you can think people using social media, they are facing, what do you -- what do you kind of list them out and what do you think they are?

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
Well, I am not sure that the people who are using social media face many challenges. I think that the advertisers who are trying to figure out how to leverage off of that usage. I think that the biggest in that -- I'll just speak to it as a user. I have a MySpace home page if you will, frankly it's got too cluttered, I mean I see too much of it that's -- its because that real estate is extremely valuable and they want to maximize their revenue from it and of course Google, paid a lot of money to be able to sell against that space. So, as with almost any successful media that has aggregated a large usage, the biggest challenge is frankly clutter. I Recently as I think I mentioned, I have been writing a report on Broadband Video. As I took a step back and I said let's break down the traditional broadcast model. And it's actually -- you actually are exposed to a 30 second unit for every two minutes of video that you watch.

That's a lot of commercial messages. So, no wonder people go to such links as investing in DVRs to be able to avoid those. Radio has had the same kind of problems, newspapers have that problem, magazines have that problem and the cluttered environment seems to -- success breeds its own seeds of over using, over-loving the media. That's already beginning to happen I think in terms of social networking. On the other hand, it does, Broadband Video does provide a means of controlling the environment and infact to some extent controlling the viewer in a way that advertisers haven't had really for about 20 years.

Jennifer Jones
So, explain that, what do you mean?

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
Well, let's take the -- probably one of the better examples out there is abc.com. When it offers up episodes of lost and desperate housewives by a Broadband Video, they allow you to fast forward view the contents but not through the commercials. But the exchange is, the commercials tend to be shorter or the pods are shorter, fewer in number and they actually spend more time making the commercials maybe a lot more informative and more engaging. So, there is a sort of an unspoken bargain struck with the -- the viewer is, we are going to make him watch the advertising to get at the content but we are not going to make you watch as much of it. And hopefully, net create an experience which is more satisfactory to the end user and it's more satisfactory to the advertiser because it offers the opportunity for engagement. Now, one of the things that we're -- we find when we talk to some of the content companies out there, is they talk about the skin of the player, the real estate around the player as being actually more valuable than the pre-roles that go inside the player and...

Jennifer Jones
Than the what that goes inside the player?

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
The pre-roles, the commercials that are run inside the player. So --

Jennifer Jones
We're getting a little bit vernacular here so I mean so pre-roles (Inaudible).

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
Yeah. So, a pre-role is a, usually they are either 15 or 30 second commercials that run before a piece of video content.

Jennifer Jones
Okay, got it.

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
So, but the -- they've actually in some cases discouraged clients from putting too many pre-roles in and instead put the ad messages in the skin, the real estate on the screen around the player because those stay up for longer and they can, with Flash and other technologies, you can actually make those pretty exciting and interesting and somebody can click on those and go and interact on a website, provide information and then come back and still watch the content and not miss anything. That's something that has never been possible on television. I mean you -- all the attempts to do interactivity, have always have interfered either with other commercials in the pod or taken people away from the program and when they come back, the program has gone on without them. So, the interactivity basically failed on that premise. You can solve that fundamental conundrum on the web.

Jennifer Jones
Very, very interesting. Well I hate to do this but I am going to have to stop this Podcast short, I've been speaking with Larry Gerbrandt who is with Nielsen Analytics as General Manager and Senior Vice-President and we've got into a lot of things on analytics and all of that and hopefully will be continued at some point in future I hope. Let me bring you back on to Marketing Voices. Larry thank you so much for being here I am Jennifer Dow Jones, Consumer Technology Ventures conference, Dow Jones VentureWire that is.

Larry Gerbrandt - Nielsen Analytics
My pleasure.