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Wednesday August 18, 5:12 pm ET
By Ben Berkowitz
LOS ANGELES, Aug 18 (Reuters) - VNU (Amsterdam:VNUN.AS - News), the world's largest market research company, whose Nielsen unit has a monopoly on U.S. television ratings, said it wants to break NPD Group's exclusive grip on U.S. video game sales data.
Michael Dowling, who runs VNU's games business unit, told Reuters on Wednesday the company was "aggressively" looking into a product for the industry's sales data as part of a larger research portfolio.
"We're looking at this opportunity ..., I would say, pretty aggressively," said Dowling, general manager of Nielsen Interactive Entertainment, which is part of the Nielsen Entertainment business of VNU.
Nielsen's entry would challenge NPD Group, a New York company whose Funworld provides monthly sales data on console games and is the only industry-accepted retail researcher.
NPD's data is a broad measure of performance, but is not seen as a complete indicator of how a company may be performing because it must estimate sales for No. 1 retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - News), which does not give out its figures.
NPD did not comment on Nielsen's potential entry into the market.
Dowling would not say if Nielsen had signed any retailers to provide data, or how close it might be to launching a service. Several major retailers either did not return calls or declined to comment on their support for a Nielsen effort.
One source familiar with a major publisher's operations said it had met with Nielsen to discuss a potential service. That source and others, who also declined to be named, said the idea of VNU's entry has been circulating for a while.
"Ultimately a competitor to NPD, whether it's us or someone else, is going to make the market better for everybody," Dowling argued.
NEW DEALS LARGE AND SMALL
Nielsen Entertainment is already well known to retailers and the U.S. media for its tracking services for television ratings, movie box-office receipts (its EDI unit), music (SoundScan) and book sales (BookScan).
More broadly, VNU has said a series of small investments in new measurement tools, combined with yet another possible big acquisition, could fuel revenue gains in the coming years.
VNU Chief Executive Rob van den Bergh told Reuters last week that the company would be on the hunt for deals after selling its phone-directory business.
In video games, it has started with a new service, launched earlier this year with the support of publisher Activision Inc. (NasdaqNM:ATVI - News). This service tracks user response to in-game ads, an increasingly attractive source of revenue for publishers.
"They happen to have the attention of a very valuable consumer demographic right now," Dowling said, referring to publishers' core audience of mostly young men with disposable incomes.
With that research, and other custom services Nielsen offers, Dowling said the company could offer more in-depth sales data that would help game publishers plan when and how to most effectively market their titles,
"We can incorporate not only sales on a title-level basis, but also what was spent to gain that level of sales," he said.
Dowling said any Nielsen service would have to compete with NPD on more than just price. While NPD does not publicly discuss pricing, subscribers are believed to pay thousands of dollars a month for its service. (Additional reporting by Ellis Mnyandu in New York)
By Ben Berkowitz
LOS ANGELES, Aug 18 (Reuters) - VNU (Amsterdam:VNUN.AS - News), the world's largest market research company, whose Nielsen unit has a monopoly on U.S. television ratings, said it wants to break NPD Group's exclusive grip on U.S. video game sales data.
Michael Dowling, who runs VNU's games business unit, told Reuters on Wednesday the company was "aggressively" looking into a product for the industry's sales data as part of a larger research portfolio.
"We're looking at this opportunity ..., I would say, pretty aggressively," said Dowling, general manager of Nielsen Interactive Entertainment, which is part of the Nielsen Entertainment business of VNU.
Nielsen's entry would challenge NPD Group, a New York company whose Funworld provides monthly sales data on console games and is the only industry-accepted retail researcher.
NPD's data is a broad measure of performance, but is not seen as a complete indicator of how a company may be performing because it must estimate sales for No. 1 retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - News), which does not give out its figures.
NPD did not comment on Nielsen's potential entry into the market.
Dowling would not say if Nielsen had signed any retailers to provide data, or how close it might be to launching a service. Several major retailers either did not return calls or declined to comment on their support for a Nielsen effort.
One source familiar with a major publisher's operations said it had met with Nielsen to discuss a potential service. That source and others, who also declined to be named, said the idea of VNU's entry has been circulating for a while.
"Ultimately a competitor to NPD, whether it's us or someone else, is going to make the market better for everybody," Dowling argued.
NEW DEALS LARGE AND SMALL
Nielsen Entertainment is already well known to retailers and the U.S. media for its tracking services for television ratings, movie box-office receipts (its EDI unit), music (SoundScan) and book sales (BookScan).
More broadly, VNU has said a series of small investments in new measurement tools, combined with yet another possible big acquisition, could fuel revenue gains in the coming years.
VNU Chief Executive Rob van den Bergh told Reuters last week that the company would be on the hunt for deals after selling its phone-directory business.
In video games, it has started with a new service, launched earlier this year with the support of publisher Activision Inc. (NasdaqNM:ATVI - News). This service tracks user response to in-game ads, an increasingly attractive source of revenue for publishers.
"They happen to have the attention of a very valuable consumer demographic right now," Dowling said, referring to publishers' core audience of mostly young men with disposable incomes.
With that research, and other custom services Nielsen offers, Dowling said the company could offer more in-depth sales data that would help game publishers plan when and how to most effectively market their titles,
"We can incorporate not only sales on a title-level basis, but also what was spent to gain that level of sales," he said.
Dowling said any Nielsen service would have to compete with NPD on more than just price. While NPD does not publicly discuss pricing, subscribers are believed to pay thousands of dollars a month for its service. (Additional reporting by Ellis Mnyandu in New York)
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