Morgan and Nielsen go head to head

The battle is heating up between the major research players in Aussie media research re online consumption.


2 weeks ago we saw the release of research from Nielsen claiming that we Australians spend more time on the web than watching TV (see post dated 19th March).


Roy Morgan have now gone out refuting this claim (http://www.roymorgan.com/news/internet-releases/2008/734/). Their single source research reports that whilst consumers spend 21.8 hours watching TV weekly, they spend just 9.5 hours on the internet.

I'm not taking sides, but 21.8 hours in front of the box is truly sad! Get a life people.

Our friendly search guru Rob Marston stirred the pot and asked Nielsen for their comments on the matter and got this back:

It is a good laugh – industry posturing and generally poor form on their part. Basically Roy Morgan’s point about methodology was incorrect & Ad-News should have checked it first – the results we put forward are based on internet and telephone interviews. We believe they missed the point that we are approaching a sea change in where peoples attention is. It is the first sign that status quo maybe changing. Ours was just the one data set that suggests this – and it is consistent with international trends we have been seeing. We also didn’t say TV was dead – that was Neil Shoebridge…

Comments anyone?!