When the fall TV season kicks off and Facebook users around the country are catching up on their favorite programs during the daily commute, Nielsen will be watching. A new partnership between the social network and Nielsen will allow Facebook to send viewer details, like age and gender, to the TV-stat-crunching company, in an effort to help advertisers learn about what shows folks are watching online. Appointment viewing has gone the way of bunny ears and “Must See TV,” and Nielsen can no longer rely on its now-antiquated ways of measuring television ratings. Instead, the company must tap into data providers like Facebook. The move dates back to October, when Nielsen revealed its new software development kit for content providers that can integrate Nielsen’s technology into browser-based video players and branded apps.
Facebook insists that it will not use viewing statistics to entice advertisers. Nielsen Media Research, the television-ratings company, will be partnering with Facebook to ascertain what television viewers are watching on their tablets and other mobile devices. In the past, Nielsen solely tracked meters on home televisions, but now finds this old system has become antiquated with the increasing ubiquity of entertainment in the digital age. Beginning in the fall, Facebook will access online television databases and send the results along with the age and gender of its users to Nielsen. The partnership, which was originally announced in October 2013, is courting controversy following a controversial study in which Facebook manipulated the posts of its users to track their moods. The social-media platform hopes to make their intentions more transparent in the forthcoming partnership, after the mood study called their privacy policies into question. “We have worked with Nielsen under strong privacy principles,” a Facebook spokesperson said, according to the Los Angeles Times. Although the social-media company insists that it will not use viewing statistics to entice advertisers, some opponents argue that Facebook could take advantage of its users’ habits, Tech Times reports. Along with Facebook, Nielsen will also working with Experian Marketing Services and insists all data collected by outside companies will remain anonymous.