Via a colleague at NCsoft, Nielsen is yet again trying to get into game demographics to sell to marketers. They’ve tried this before, but failed. The old plan, in addition to the antiquated diaries they already use for television :
Nielsen intends to roll out two products this year, the more formidable one being a “tag” that PC, console, and online game developers can build into their software to be used by Nielsen to measure all sorts of in-game activity, especially response to advertising. This includes how people navigate through games, what levels they reach, and how long they spend on each level.
But, because tag placement requires the participation of game developers, Nielsen doesn’t expect the first tagged game to be released until the second half of 2005.
I suspect this also failed because the developers didn’t give a shit about “[measuring] all sorts of in-game activity.”
The new plan is a People Meter-style “audio scanning device.” I didn’t know how People Meters work, the devices they use to track television habits outside of the diaries, and Wikipedia’s article sucks, so I Googled it. Here’s a description of a portable one.
The Portable People Meter, developed by Arbitron Inc., is a pager-sized device that is carried by a representative panel of television viewers. It automatically detects inaudible codes that broadcasters embed in the audio portion of their programming using encoders provided by BBM and Arbitron. At the end of each day, the survey participants place the meters into base stations that recharge the devices and send the collected codes to BBM for tabulation. The Portable People Meter can measure exposure to any electronic media, which has audio that can be encoded – television, cable, and radio, even cinema advertising and in-store media.
I am not making this up, and Nielsen is planning to do the same thing with games: “the equipment detects each game’s unique ‘audio signature,’ compares it to the reference library of audio signatures compiled by Nielsen, and determines what games are being played when and where.”
Alrighty then!
They’re also getting data from Sony, which is much less bizarre: “which Sony games are being played, by whom, and for how long — ‘to enhance the data we are collecting and to give us the opportunity to take a hybrid-based approach to measurement.’”
They’re not specific, but I imagine they’re talking PS3 data. I’ve curious about how seriously Sony and Microsoft are taking their mountains of free data from online consoles — really, the Xbox 360 knows everything I play, for how long, what I do in game, when I log out, what TV and movies I watch, which DVDs I purchase. One would like to think that they’re using it to make the games better, instead of selling it to marketers so we might one day enjoy the wonders of dynamic advertising in everything we play, but hey.
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