ErinMedia Feels Nielsen Launch 'Chill'
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 2/18/2007 7:00:00 PM
Startup TV-ratings company ErinMedia is claiming that Nielsen Co.'s launch of a unit that also uses digital set-top data has had a “chilling effect” on its efforts to secure $25 million from investors.
Nielsen last week unveiled its plans to consolidate its various initiatives involving digital set-top box data into a new service, called Nielsen DigitalPlus.
The service, which will integrate set-top data from cable operators and satellite providers with information from other Nielsen units, also picked up a customer last week. DirecTV and Nielsen reached an agreement to test the measurement of interactive-viewing behavior by the satellite provider's subscribers, through an anonymous panel of 300,000 DirecTV customers.
The Nielsen DigitalPlus announcement comes as Erin Media, which has an antitrust suit pending against Nielsen, tries to nail down $25 million in financing. ErinMedia has been working with venture capital firm Spark Capital.
“The timing [of Nielsen's announcement] is not coincidental,” said Frank Maggio, the Florida real-estate entrepreneur behind ErinMedia. “It's had a chilling effect on discussions with possible consortium members. … If that was Nielsen's intent, I would be the first to admit it worked.”
But Nielsen officials denied their news was in any way related to ErinMedia's efforts to find investors, adding that the creation of the Nielsen DigitalPlus unit has long been in the works.
“He [Maggio] has no facts to support his absurd accusations, and the actions he ascribes to us are false and groundless,” Nielsen spokesman Gary Holmes said. “These initiatives have been around for a long time, and consolidating all this together into one business is something that didn't just happen.”
Nielsen's set-top data projects date back to Warner Amex's QUBE system in the 1980s. More recently, the TV-ratings giant has worked with Comcast to process data from the cable operator's video-on-demand server data and to test addressable ads. Nielsen also worked with TiVo to establish a joint panel of TiVo subscribers, whose set-top data Nielsen processed on a daily basis.
Nielsen DigitalPlus will use resources and information from several Nielsen businesses.
“The reason we're pulling it together, branding it the way we did, is to make it clear to clients who to talk to and who's working on this,” said Jed Meyer, senior vice president of Nielsen DigitalPlus.
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