Ladas wrote:
It isn't, its done client side, since the systems require verification of who is actually using the resource, and the verification needs to be updated at a fairly frequent schedule.
I'm not even sure how you would coordinate doing it server side, given how many sources of information, IPS, vendors, etc exist out there, and how you would track a user across all those domains. That is unless you mean tracking at the original source only (say NBC.com), which won't work for the obvious reason it doesn't allow the collection of the valid information, and would cause serious problems with collecting demographic information.
If you elect to participate as a Neilson endpoint, they take down information such as sex, age, etc and give each person in the household an identifier number. For the TV side, when you turn on the TV, their monitoring station flashes until you enter the number on the supplied remote that corresponds to the viewer (usually by age, so oldest in the family is 1, next is 2, etc).
Every 45 minutes or so, if no changes have been made, the system asks for verification that the information is correct.
Which is overly complex and arcane. A DVR box only needs communicate what's being watched on what box at what time. Same thing with internet viewing. Forex: Episode 8, season 3 of House downloaded 26,374,213 times on 17,324,193 unique IPs. Watched by 11,232,432 Cable Boxes, and DVRed 9,439,435 times.
Oh ****! House must be popular! Its not exactly rocket science.
I was asked to participate in a neilsen ratings thing. Tossed the book out when I read that they don't count timeshifted viewing. Literally EVERYTHING I watch is timeshifted. (Well, except for football. But that doesn't really count. They're not going to cancel the NFL on Sunday.)