Nielsen to merge online viewing into ratings

The Nielsen Company will now merge the information about online show viewing into its overall picture of how a TV program is doing. According to MediaPost, Nielsen will roll out “Internet meters” (presumably the computer equivalent of a “people meter”) in August. It will take that data and combine it with the existing Nielsen data on conventional watchers and time shifters to come up with an overall number of time spent watching a show. The so-called C3 ratings standard will incorporate all this data beginning in September and will replace the existing protocol come February, 2011. C3 is the metric by which most advertising is sold, so this will mark a major change in audience measurement and program revenue.