TiVo Helps NBC Track Rio Olympic Viewing Trends

(ATR) U.S. broadcaster NBC wants to know how consumers engage with media on multiple platforms, and the Rio Olympics may be the key to finding answers.

To study this trend, NBC partnered with TiVo Research and RealityMine for the Rio 2016 Olympics. TiVo users in the U.S. will provide the base for research, while RealityMine will provide NBC with real-time data about how consumers are watching the 2016 Olympics and on what platform.

Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development at NBCUniversal, told Around the Rings the two companies were the "best methodology currently available" to pursue the project. Data across four media platforms - television, laptops, tablets and smartphones - will be measured.

Rio 2016 was chosen for the study because the 17 days of the event is long enough to map trends for consumers, and it will add to the video research NBC has done since the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Over 2.3 million TiVo subscribers in the U.S. will be canvassed for the study; users of those platforms can opt in to having their media consumptions habits monitored.

"The research effort surrounding the Olympics, which we call ‘The Billion Dollar Lab,’ has always been an attempt to move the ability to measure media consumption to the next level," Wurtzel said.

"Our hope is that it will provide improved methods for measuring cross-platform consumption which is the most significant research challenge facing the media industry."

In addition to measuring cross-platform trends, NBC will also measure changes to how consumers viewed the Olympics from the 2014 winter edition in Sochi and how social media impacts consumer habits during the Games.

Wurtzel said the post-Games aspects of the study are still being decided, and it is unclear if NBC will continue the partnership after the Rio Olympics. That decision will not be made until the data from Rio is analyzed, as Olympic research continues for the next cycle.

Written by Aaron Bauer in Rio de Janeiro

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