Madison Avenue was salivating on Wednesday over the possibility it will finally get some data on the viewership habits of Netflix customers.
Long suspected to be the No. 1 culprit in stealing away eyeballs from broadcast and cable TV, Netflix viewership and its shows’ popularity have remained a mystery to advertisers because the streaming service does not release such data.
That could change, however, after Nielsen, the ratings agency, on Wednesday said it would start to gather data on viewership of programs on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
“I buy audiences through AOL and Hulu; it’s good to look at trends,” Steve Carbone, chief digital officer at MediaCom, told The Post. “I’d be able to leverage [the Netflix data] across ad-friendly outlets, if [the ratings] came available.”
Carbone said the Nielsen-Netflix effort may also allow Hollywood to gain additional leverage with networks that sell to Netflix, based on the data.
Advertisers are battling declining TV audiences — off some 20 percent in households with subscription video, according to Bernstein Research.
Nielsen is currently supplying big media clients with data on how their shows rate in subscription-video homes, WSJ.com reported late Tuesday. The move is aimed at helping content owners figure out the worth of their product.
Netflix makes up 37 percent of subscription VOD (video on demand) homes, Nielsen’s Senior Vice President Brian Fuhrer told The Post.
Other services include Hulu and Amazon.
The Nielsen streaming data will only examine TV viewing and not that on mobile devices or desktops.
It said the vast majority of so-called SVOD viewing occurs on TV.
“This is needed,” Sam Armando, director of strategic intelligence at Starcom MediaVest Group, told The Post. “ All we see is TV viewing declining and the assumption is it’s going to SVOD.”
But questions on Nielsen’s soon-to-debut streaming ratings remain. For example, Armando said, “will they tell me if ‘Sons of Anarchy’ was streamed on FX or on Hulu Plus?”
The questions remain because Nielsen is collecting the streaming data without the cooperation of the streaming companies.
It will monitor the audio tracks to determine the name of the show.
Not everyone thinks the Nielsen effort will work.
Lesley Pinkney, vice president of interactive at Walton Isaacson, Chicago, told The Post that Nielsen’s move to just now collect streaming data is almost laughable in a world where digital buyers have highly sophisticated data on online video.
“[Nielsen] hasn’t invested in any innovation; they should be light-years ahead,” Pinkney said. “We’re in the era of big data,” and Nielsen is still having difficulty reporting correct TV ratings.