New Nielson Internet Audience Panel

The "New Nielson Internet Audience Panel" - The Nielsen Company announced the launch of a panel and platform for measuring Internet audiences. The new panel increases Nielsen's measurement of Web sites from 3,000 to more than 30,000, provides better representation of Hispanics, teens, and cell phone only households, and improves coverage of multiple personal computers in households.

The new Internet measurement panel is more than eight times larger than Nielsen's previous sample. The enhanced platform employs innovative panel calibration techniques, including the use of Nielsen's TV/Internet convergence panel, providing more coverage of hard-to-measure Internet users. With this launch, Nielsen is introducing the largest panel for online audience measurement in the U.S., making it significantly more representative of the entire Internet population.

"There is incredible demand for more accurate, reliable and high-quality Web audience measurement. Nielsen's new panel is a huge leap forward in measurement to address that need," said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen's online division. "Nielsen continues to strive to provide clients and the industry with the best, most insightful research possible. This enhanced platform enables us to do just that. One of the most exciting things about this new methodology is by including Nielsen's TV/Internet convergence panel for online audience reporting, we are laying the foundation for better future cross-platform measurement."

Greater Granularity and Deeper Demographics

Nielsen's underlying methodology for this expanded panel is already in use in eight international markets. The U.S. market will benefit from this deeper level of analysis, including better demographic granularity and Reach/Frequency analysis supporting more sophisticated media planning capabilities and enabling better targeting of online consumers.

This new panel and measurement approach is the result of significant Nielsen Company investment in developing more transparent and innovative research methodologies and the culmination of months of close collaboration with clients and the Media Ratings Council (MRC).

Internet audience measurement data reflecting the new panel is now available with the July 11 "data of record" release of Nielsen's NetView, VideoCensus, search and online retail measurement services.