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Nielsen Ratings


Bengals1181

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  • 2 weeks later...

I used to work for Nielsen as an installer....but it was 10 years ago. It is a very invasive process and you won't make much money from it unless you are a "prime" home (their first choice)....and even then it's not much. Prime homes get some more up front money....but after that it's like $5 per device per month. It may be all wireless by now but if not, they will want to drill holes, run wires all over, and monitor EVERYTHING with a tuner in it, even if you don't use it. If the equipment fails, they will nag you to come back out every single time it fails. Some of your equipment will have to be taken apart to have sensors put inside them. Prime homes were asked to participate for 5 years, alternate homes were 3 years if I recall. If you have any other questions, let me know.

P.S....if it seems like they REALLY want you to participate and they offer you more than $50 to join, you are probably a prime home and you can hold out for some more money most likely.  They won't tell you if you are a prime home or not, but try holding out for more cash and if they offer you more then you're a prime.

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I used to work for Nielsen as an installer....but it was 10 years ago. It is a very invasive process and you won't make much money from it unless you are a "prime" home (their first choice)....and even then it's not much. Prime homes get some more up front money....but after that it's like $5 per device per month. It may be all wireless by now but if not, they will want to drill holes, run wires all over, and monitor EVERYTHING with a tuner in it, even if you don't use it. If the equipment fails, they will nag you to come back out every single time it fails. Some of your equipment will have to be taken apart to have sensors put inside them. Prime homes were asked to participate for 5 years, alternate homes were 3 years if I recall. If you have any other questions, let me know.

P.S....if it seems like they REALLY want you to participate and they offer you more than $50 to join, you are probably a prime home and you can hold out for some more money most likely.  They won't tell you if you are a prime home or not, but try holding out for more cash and if they offer you more then you're a prime.

Also, if you are a prime home....you can ask for a little money for your trouble if they have to come out to fix anything....every time. Your ratings will count more heavily than an alternate so they want your setup to be 100% functional at all times.

Well that is absolutely fascinating. I had no idea how any of that worked... 

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Well that is absolutely fascinating. I had no idea how any of that worked... 

Yeah no kidding.  I just assumed they had you fill out weekly reports/surveys or called you at intervals or something.  Wow!!!...and YIKES!!!

No Thanks!!!...unless there was serious coin involved or I got significant free equipment/stuff/whatever.

 

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They will offer you no incentive other than a little more cash if you are a prime home. The reason being is that they do not want to influence your habits in ANY way and offering your any product can in some way be seen as an influence. Their business is built around uninfluenced data that they sell to the networks and advertisers out there.

Being a prime home is nothing more than being the first home selected for your area by their system. They really, really want that house on the rating system. Any house they install in that area after being turned down by the prime household will simply be the first house that said yes to their offer and they won't fight very hard to keep it in the system. The sales reps get paid a lot more for landing a prime house so they will try very hard to get it. There is a formula to picking prime homes and it comes down to demographics that represent that particular neighborhood. The selection process is done from the corporate offices in Dunedin, Florida using whatever formula it is that they use.

 

I was a field rep for them for 2 years,but I got tired of going into nasty ass homes and/or dangerous neighborhoods after awhile. For every one decent/nice house you would install or go do maintenance on, there are 3 or 4 absolutely disgusting homes or places in extremely dangerous neighborhoods to go into. The funny thing was that the shittier the house, the more picky they were about exposed wiring and how well you hid the equipment.....the nicer homes would seem to care the least. One lady in Oakwood (Dayton) had us drilling holes in her pristine hardwood floors because we had no other way to run the wiring inside with the equipment we had and she wanted in the system so badly. Another guy in a dumpy house in Moraine literally had speaker wires spider webbed across his ceiling for surround sound and told us in no uncertain terms that he did not want to see an inch of our wiring anywhere....lol. I have so many other crazy stories from that job. Glad I did it, glad I got out of it too...

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There is no journaling with electronic monitoring. You literally do nothing but your normal viewing routine. Every single device that can tune in programming will be monitored whether you use it or not. Not sure how they handle streaming programming as that came about after my time there  

As for stealing cable or Internet, they do not rat you out. It's not their job to care. 

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