Big changes could be coming soon to Nielsen’s TV rating system to include video viewing statistics from devices like the Xbox, PlayStation and iPad.
According to sources who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, a committee of TV network and advertising reps have plans to change the rating system to include data from streaming devices that people use to access apps like Netflix and Hulu.
The plans aren’t concrete yet, but Nielsen hopes to have new hardware and software tools in place to measure the new data by September.
But even with the new tools, Nielsen won’t be able to track app-specific ratings unless a company like Netflix or Hulu agrees to encode its signals in a way Nielsen can identify.
In a similar move, Billboard announced this week that it will include YouTube viewing statistics into account for its Hot 100 rankings.
