NEW YORK, USA: NBC is using the Olympics as a `billion-dollar research lab' to get a sense of how people are using different media platforms to experience the Beijing Games that begin August 8.

Besides giving advertisers a clearer picture of how much consumers are paying attention to the games, NBC hopes its research provides a comprehensive picture of how people are supplementing TV viewership with tools such as video streaming, video on demand and mobile phones, said Alan Wurtzel, the company's research chief.

"The billion-dollar lab is an extraordinary research opportunity,'' he said. NBC has scheduled 3,600 hours of Olympics programming on its main network, along with Telemundo , USA, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC and Bravo. That's the equivalent of eight days of programming packed into each day.

In addition, the company is planning to make 2,200 hours of streaming video available on NBCOlympics.com. Consumers may also get video on demand via their computer and Olympics content through their mobile phones.

NBC relies on Nielsen Media Research for a count of how many people are watching the Olympics on their TVs at home, but there is no existing research tool that pulls together all the different types of exposure, Wurtzel said. With the help of outside companies and its own research staff, NBC is using about 10 methods for measuring the audience.

NBC has contracted with Quantcast Corp to get a sense of who is using NBCOlympics.com. Besides video streaming, computer users are being offered reams of Olympics data, blogging of live events and gaming. NBC wants to know how many people will visit NBCOlympics.com, what pages they are viewing and how much time they are spending on the computer.

The information could be used on the fly to program the Web site. If one sport is doing particularly well with video on demand requests, NBCOlympics.com might feature it on its home page. Same thing with mobile phone content: Will phone owners be interested in updates on events or in streaming video?

"I have no idea how people are going to use this stuff," Wurtzel said.

NBC will also be working with another company, Integrated Media Measurement Inc, that will distribute special cell phones to consumers. They will measure, through a signal included in Olympics audio, how much people are exposed to Olympics programming when they aren't at home.

Source: Agencies