The new ratings, Nielsen says, can rank an online video next to a podcast next to an article. Unlike television or radio, the internet isn’t a medium that funnels just one format. The aim of Nielsen’s new ratings is to create a context to figure out what people care about online, regardless of what form it takes. The online rating system will combine Nielsen formulas with data from Adobe’s online traffic-measuring and internet TV software. Many of the largest traditional TV networks have already signed up, among them ESPN, Univision, Sony, Viacom, and Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. […] By pulling together data from online TV and video, games, audio, and text across all the devices used to consume all of that content, Nielsen and Adobe are looking for a way to take all of those fragments and piece them together to create a picture that makes sense the way old media did. Whether it will work is a separate question, but the impetus to try won’t go away soon. The old way made a lot of people in old media a lot of money. If someone can approximate the old way for new media, maybe more of that money will start rolling in, just like it used to. – Marcus Wohlsen,WIRED

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