Nielsen: We’re going to measure Pandora

An interesting tidbit that came out of Tuesday’s unexpected acquisition of Arbitron by Nielsen: Pandora will be measured by Arbitron at some point in the future.

That’s the suggestion of Nielsen president of global media products Steve Hasker, who is overseeing the new acquisition.

He told Bloomberg that the venture is looking to provide as much in-demand data as possible, and certainly seeing Pandora’s ratings right alongside traditional radio would be something of great interest to media buyers and planners.

Though Pandora competes with traditional radio for ad dollars, to this point there’s been no way to directly compare its listenership. Pandora controls the information released about its audience.

Of course, getting a direct and fair comparison may not be easy. Pandora has thousands of channels for listeners to choose from, and so it would probably be easier to do measurements based on geography than on genre.

Whether that’s the sort of data media people want remains to be seen.

Tags: acquisition, arbitron, arbitron nielsen, audience, media, media people, nielsen, nielsen arbitron, nielsen pandora, pandora, pandora nielsen, pandora ratings, people, radio, Steve Hasker, Though Pandora