nbcuniversal to team up with tivo and realitymine to track how people watch the olympics dec 14 2015nbcuniversals research chief has called the olympics his billiondollar research labthe games offer a perfect opportunity every two years to analyze how media habits are changing said alan wurtzel president of research and media development at the company because they deliver a large audience that tunes in to hundreds of hours of coverage across a proliferation of screens over a 17day periodfor the summer olympics in rio de janeiro next year nbcuniversal plans to team up with the television tech company tivo and realitymine a research startup to track how people watch the games on television mobile and digital platformsthe partnership to be announced on monday is intended to provide insights into the daily habits of olympics viewers and the interplay between watching coverage on television and using tablets and smartphones it is also expected to deliver clues to how people watch outside the home as well as the effect of social media on viewership and the effectiveness of advertising during olympics coveragethe deal is part of a growing push across the media industry to better understand how vast digital changes are transforming the way people consume entertainment industry executives have said that they are seeking alternatives to nielsen the dominant measurement company for user engagement which they complain has been slow to adaptas nielsen has introduced new offerings to track digital media rivals also have pushed ahead in september two smaller measurement companies comscore and rentrak announced plans to merge seeking to create a stronger challenge to nielsenmore competition is always healthy mr wurtzel said frankly it is a good opportunity to see whether or not there are some other players out there that can contribute to the tv measurement industrytivo which introduced the first digital video recorder in 1999 has built a research business based on proprietary tivo settopbox data and partnerships with cable and satellite companies its panel now includes 23 million households realitymine was founded in 2012 and tracks digital media activity offering the ability to measure how people watch programming across platforms realitymine also plans to announce on monday that it has landed a 16 million investmentnoting that tivo places software in homes that captures every second of television viewing tom rogers the companys chief executive said we know what actual homes are doing what they watch what they buymr wurtzel said getting the research right was crucial to nbcuniversal which in 2014 agreed to pay 775 billion for exclusive broadcast rights to the six olympic games from 2022 to 2032the research helps dictate programming decisions during past olympics for example one major concern was that livestreaming a sporting event during the day would cannibalize viewership of the same event when it was shown later on tape delay mr wurtzel said the research showed that the live stream actually served as a promotional tool to drive viewership for the primetime eventthe notion of ubiquity is not cannibalization he