At the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Audience Measurement 8.0 conference, June 10-11, 2013, CRE members will present key findings from studies into three areas closely followed by audience researchers.

A team led by Beth Rockwood, Senior Vice President, Market Resources, Discovery Communications, and chair of the CRE's Social Media Committee, will present the findings of the CRE's comprehensive study into how social media interaction impacts television viewing. Findings will encompass a quantitative mobile diary survey, conducted by the Keller Fay Group; social media analytics by NM Incite and Bluefin Labs; and ethnographies by Nielsen Life360.

Joanne Burns, Head of Research, 20th Television, and Laura Cowan, Research Director, LIN Media – who are co-chairs of the CRE's Media Consumption & Engagement (MC&E;) Committee – will, along with research partner Chadwick Martin Bailey, present findings of the CRE study of the relationship of mobile-device usage and TV consumption. The CRE sought to understand how concurrent video media usage affects TV viewing; whether mobile viewing is additive to, or a substitute for, traditional television viewing; and how users access television program content on their devices.

David Poltrack, Chief Research Officer of CBS Corporation and chair of the CRE's ROI Committee, will present findings of a white paper prepared with Sequent Partners, reflecting some 50 in-person interviews including leading modeling firms, prominent academics, agencies, and modeling clients at major advertisers recruited with the support of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). The CRE's objectives include the development of an in-depth understanding of principal ROI methods used; defining best practices; and recommending priority areas for industry improvement.

Findings on all three efforts will be disclosed in future newsletters. In the meantime, we hope readers can join us at the June conference!

The CRE's Local Measurement Committee, chaired by Billy McDowell, Vice President of Research at Raycom Media, Inc., has commissioned BIA/Kelsey to assist in an in-depth analysis of Nielsen diary-measurement data with the intention of developing a whitepaper to report findings.

The analysis will encompass two sets of data Nielsen has provided -- on 10-year trends of relative errors in diary markets, and posted advertising schedules. The Committee will consider changes in Effective Sample Size and ratings trends over time, and will seek to address questions of interest to both buyers and sellers of these data.

An update will be provided in a subsequent newsletter.

The Council for Research Excellence LinkedIn Group has more than 300 members and counting. Research professionals and others throughout the media and advertising industries are regularly sharing news and viewpoints. Join the conversation!

We're pleased to welcome Janice Finkel-Greene, Executive Vice President and Director of Buying Analytics at MagnaGlobal, as our newest full Council member. At MagnaGlobal, the strategic worldwide media unit of the Interpublic Group, Janice works with the forecasting, insights and negotiation divisions to manage and mine data for all media channels.

Scott Brown
Senior Vice President, Technology & Strategic Relations for Nielsen

January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas once again turned out attendance equivalent to a mid-sized city (more than 150,000 people per one count). What did all those visitors get to see?

If others were like me, their attention was drawn to the latest big displays. Not the show-floor displays -- such as booths -- but the enormous new display devices coming in consumer electronics. We saw:

a) A deep improvement in size, resolution, and connected capability – albeit, initially, at high cost to the consumer;

b) More use of streaming IP platforms and multi-screen display; and, consequently,

c) Implications for image-capture: cameras and facial-recognition technologies.

A big innovation was the organic light-emitting diode (OLED), allowing brighter and vibrant colors, and sharper images with extremely thin screen displays. Manufacturers deploying this new technology for ultra-thin TV sets include LG, Samsung, Sony, and the fast-emerging Chinese manufacturer Hisense. OLED is, in one word, breathtaking. But set prices (currently in the $10K to $15K range) will need to come down.

Also on display: the much-buzzed-about 4k or "Ultra" HD TV (UHDTV). Manufacturers including LG, Samsung, Sony, Hisense, Sharp, and Toshiba showcased their wares, with screen-sizes reaching as large as 120 inches. "4k" is so called because the screens have four times the resolution of today's 1080P display or 4,000 pixels across the horizontal axis compared to HDTV's 1920 horizontal pixels. Sony and Panasonic even showed prototype Hybrid OLED/4K displays. 4k sets also come with limitations of content, price tag ($25K to $40k), and available cable, DBS, and telco bandwidth. Nevertheless, you have to love the technology purely for its breakthrough forward-thinking ingenuity.

But, as with other gee-whiz technologies, content and user experience are central to success.

Which takes me to the content-delivery portion of the consumer-electronics equation.

The Cloud is changing everything

Ultraviolet technology is revolutionizing storage, while all manufacturers are using Wi-Fi for delivery of streaming, multiscreen, and over-the-top services. "Screen mirroring" is taking hold as a capability of moving a smartphone or tablet display to a large-screen display -- or even an in-automobile display, enabling your car to mirror an entertainment system.

Speaking of tablets, we're seeing low-cost producers flooding the market. Eventually, stand-alone tablets may become a near giveaway to enable lucrative content sales. So we're starting to see the rise of crossover devices known as "Phablets," combining the best phone/tablet functions.

I'd mentioned the notable Chinese manufacturing presence in relation to large-screen displays. They were also a major-player small-screen presence too. One of the most interesting phablets on display was the Huawei Ascend Mate … perhaps as good as anything from LG or Samsung but at a lower price. Hisense, with attractive Android tablets, phablets, and phones, took the CES floor space that Microsoft used to occupy – and their products, en masse, are mirroring those of the very prolific Samsung and LG firms. Just as the United States ceded consumer-electronics manufacturing to Japan, and Japan to South Korea, so too are Korean manufacturers now faced with Chinese competitors intent on taking market share.

All this disruption (to borrow a fashionable word) in content storage, delivery and display is forcing what I call "traditional distributor creativity" – developments like Verizon Media Server, DirecTV Genie and the controversial Dish Autohop, all on display at CES. Traditional players are not standing still; they're placing the multiscreen experience in front of subscribers.

Emerging technologies included mobile digital TV, hi-tech glasses from Google and Vuzix, and more evidence of the automobile as the "fourth screen." Increasingly, "media" will be unavoidable… with connectivity a given, and portable, on-the-go, out-of-home use a reality.

I touched on the emerging facial-recognition technology on display at CES; this ties to identifying in-room viewers, which has enormous implications for audience measurement.

What's ahead? With everything moving to the Cloud, DVRs as we know them will make way for seamless, instant-on-demand Cloud-delivered content. Not surprisingly, wireless and mobile activity will only grow. And in what many of us no doubt greet as the best news of all, battery life will improve; instead of charging every 10 hours, think every 10 days.

So what did CES mean this year?

• Breakthrough (if pricey) advancement in display technology;
• Digital sharing, connectivity and "mirroring"—everyone's doing it;
• The Cloud as the engine for streaming to connected TVs and to and between devices; and
• Deeply integrated chips, with Wi-Fi, GPS, and near-field communication (NFC), enabling an intelligent ecosystem of devices capable of collecting Big Data about all users and uses.

We are on the brink of being a highly connected, on-demand world … if not for the silos that business ambitions create.

Here's CRE member Brad Adgate's January 2013 appearance on “The Daily Show,” where he gives his take on the future of TV investigative reporting to an incredulous John Oliver.

Please join us for our next "Meet the CRE" webinar, on Wednesday, May 8 at 3 p.m. eastern. Pat Liguori, Senior Vice President, Research of the ABC Owned Television Stations and chair of the CRE's Return Path Measurement Committee, will discuss the CRE's recent study of the proliferation of video-consumption devices. Here are details:

"Meet the CRE" Webinar
Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Time: 3:00 pm, Eastern Daylight Time (New York, GMT-04:00)
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