Is Nielsen's shift from page views to time spent a good move? The BIGresearch VP says no.

Somewhat quietly this week, Nielsen put an end to page view ratings. (That's good, or is it bad?) They replaced it with time spent. (That's good? No, that's bad.)

Neither page views nor time spent are good. Both are bad, although Yahoo!, Google, comScore and Hitwise all have similar practices.

So what's bad if everybody is doing it?

Is there good science in this? No, not really. Time spent with media does not tell you anything about the media's value to the consumer, and if it does not tell you the value it has to the consumer then why would you use it? Time spent certainly has no value to advertisers, marketers, brand managers, and it clearly has no value to any researchers involved with digital media.

However, this story has a plot, so let's connect the dots. 

In the Radio Business Report on June 25, Arbitron, the father of Project Apollo (with Nielsen as the Godfather), announced that the Personal People Meter will now measure time spent exposed (TSE). Over a year ago, Arbitron purported to measure potential to hear, but now it's TSE. Of course, Arbitron reserved the right apparently to be arbitrary in its measurement. Several months ago, Nielsen joined with the In-Store Marketing Institute, in order to develop an In-store GRP measurement (Project P.R.I.S.M.).

Yes, you are minimally in a time warp: just when you thought GRPs had been declared obsolete, they're back. They didn't have meaning before, and dusting them off does not give them any more currency now, or does it?

Why should the industry care?

The difference is this: Nielsen and Arbitron -- while their measurements have no use value -- do sell them as third party legitimacy, even if their measures are suspect.

Google, has competition; Yahoo!, MSN, et cetera. But Arbitron and Nielsen have no competitors. That is called a monopoly, a monopoly that sells currency as a legitimated third party. Their allies are the ad agencies who buy time based on this currency; and then the media companies buy the currency because everyone else does. Therefore, even if its wrong measurement, we are all wrong equally.

Now let's get back to time spent (exposed), or rather time spent potential for exposure. This measure, if it had meaning, is not universally valid for all media, but it does privilege the status quo: T.V., which has been losing audience and yet commanding more money.  Now T.V. will be able to justify itself in a Nielsen/Arbitron world of TSE with third party currency.

Folks, this is not a measurement issue. Nielsen does not even care that we're now living in a world of hypertext and multitasking where time spent is meaningless.

For marketers, advertisers, brand markets, here is what you should do:

1. Ignore TSE, because the ones who do will win in the long run
2. Look for measures that address the use value of media that consumers acknowledge influence their purchase decision
3. Determine the media scape of your customer and their activities they engage in (even when they spend time, they may not be paying attention)
4. Get your measure from your customers. Yes, they interpret their situations, but technology also interprets the situation. Back in McLuhan's day, the media was the message. Today the media is both the message and the measure
5. Don't ask your Market Mix and Media Mix Modeling people for their opinion. GRPs will make their lives easier, and they are the last people who know how different media affect, or how networks affect, or what affects the consumer. Their jobs are to take data and organize it, even if it's garbage data.

You might think that this is a strident and cynical commentary. To me, though, it is less cynical than the producers and consumers of the recycled monopoly money of our current state of media measurement.

Joe Pilotta is Vice President of BIGresearch, and a Professor at Ohio State University, School of Communications. Read full bio.