电视已死？

    12年前的2002年，也就是谷歌上市前的一年，时任传媒巨头维亚康姆公司（Viacom）CEO的梅尔•卡马金造访了谷歌公司（Google）的总部。卡马金是一个传奇广告销售人（此君可以说是《广告狂人》中的唐•德雷伯的真人版），他在谷歌总部会见了谷歌的“三巨头”埃里克•施密特、拉里•佩奇和谢尔盖•布林。撮合这次会面的是在业内备受信任、人缘极好的艾伦公司（Allen and Company）风投家南茜•佩雷茨曼。

    谷歌的团队在这次会见中向卡马金解释了网络搜索广告的收费机制，也就是说，只有当有人点击了一幅广告，广告主才需要向谷歌付费。据《纽约客》（New Yorker ）记者、《被谷歌：我们所知的世界末日》（Googled: The End of the World As We Know It）一书的作者肯•奥雷塔描述，卡马金被这次演示震惊得目瞪口呆。最后，他总算意识到，谷歌将对按次收费的电视和广告业形成多么重大的威胁，不禁恼羞成怒。

    当时，卡马金用这样一句话对谷歌三巨头概括了传统媒体和数字媒体之间越来越紧张的关系：

    据奥雷塔的书说，卡马金当时说的是：“你们他妈的是用这种魔法胡搞呢！”

    大概没有一句话能比卡马金的这句美国国骂更能形象地反映传统媒体界的敌意了。卡马金提供了充足的解释以支持自己的观点，奥雷塔也一丝不苟地将它全部记录在了自己的书里。

    “你要想在‘超级碗’上买一个广告位，就得付250万美元的场地费。我不知道这个广告能带来多大效益。你得自己掏钱，自己承担风险。”

    对于按点击量收费，卡马金是这样评论的：

    “这是世界上最糟糕的一种业务模式。你不会想让人们知道什么才是有效益的。如果他们知道了什么才是有效益的，那么到时候你收的费用肯定不如你卖气氛、卖神秘感的时候多。”

    除了搜索业务，谷歌另一个最显著的遗产就是，整个公司都痴迷于基于数据的决策。在谷歌的智力和战略的影响下，我们已经习惯对任何事都用数据衡量一番。今天人们就连跑步时也得揣着一个计步器，对投资无疑也要做衡量，就连看一场球都有人建立“先进”的统计方法对两队分析来分析去。你和你的同事是不是也经常谈论应该怎么样衡量这个会议或那个会议的效果？

    谷歌几乎什么都衡量，全世界也在跟风。你还不信？那你不妨想想全球最老牌的传媒公司之一的尼尔森公司（Nielsen）所发生的变化。

    尼尔森一直被视为一家权威评级机构，它的评级甚至可以左右一些企业和职业的生死。但互联网的崛起杀了尼尔森一个措手不及，给康姆斯克（Comscore）这样的后起之秀创造了空间。在日新月益的数字时代经历了一番垂死挣扎后，尼尔森公司于2006年被几家私募股权公司联手私有化，并且挖来了通用电气（General Electric）传奇人物大卫•卡尔霍恩担任CEO。2009年，卡尔霍恩又将麦肯锡媒体业务的高级合作人史蒂夫•哈斯克招至麾下，彻底重组尼尔森的评级业务，使之适应数字时代的要求。

    五年后，尼尔森公司重新崛起为数字时代的弄潮儿。尼尔森的企业战略仍然不变：继续做视频广告行业的第三方衡量标准（全球视频广告行业的市值高达2120亿美元）。但科技的进步促使这家拥有40000名员工的大公司不得不做出一些重大的变革——毕竟30年前美国只有4个频道，20年前只有30个频道，10年前已经有了300个频道，而如今的视频节目已经遍地开花。

    全球视频广告有压倒性的比例都被企业买来投放在传统的电视节目上。几十年来，每次尼尔森的收视率评级一出，无数广告主都会垂头丧气。

    哈斯克和他的团队采取了两大举措建立更精确的数据。

    首先，尼尔森公司与Facebook、Twitter和益百利（Experian）等公司建立了深厚的数据合作关系，使他们的报告大大提高了精确度。在几大原始大数据公司之中，尼尔森公司通过与Facebook展开合作，整合了大量的新数据组，包括通过访问Facebook的12亿用户的个人资料来确定调查样本的年龄、性别和地理位置。尼尔森仍然保持着它的代表性样本（虽然这个概念经常被批评者诟病），但是他们现在改为通过一系列合作伙伴来确定代表性样本。

    A decade ago, in the year before Google went public in 2003, then-Viacom (VIA) CEO Mel Karmazin, a legendary (if not Don Draper-like) ad salesmen, visited Goole's corporate headquarters, the Googleplex. Nancy Peretsman, the deeply connected and trusted Allen and Company investment banker, had set up the meeting between Karmazin and the Google management troika of Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.

    At that session, the Google team explained how cost per click worked for the veteran outdoor, radio, and television salesman. Google (GOOG) advertisers only paid when somebody clicked on their ad. According to Ken Auletta, longtime New Yorker media correspondent and author ofGoogled: The End of the World As We Know It, Karmazin was dumbfounded by the presentation. Eventually he grew angry as he realized how threatening Google was to the historically under-measured television and radio industries.

    At that point, Karmazin turned to Google founders and summarized the growing tensions between traditional and digital media:

    "You guys are fucking with the magic," Karmazin said, according to Auletta's book.

    Perhaps no sentence better encapsulates the defensiveness of the traditional media business more than Karmazin's colorful observation. The executive provided ample commentary to support his thesis through additional quotes that Auletta meticulously documents in his book.

    "You buy a commercial in the Super Bowl, you're going to pay $2.5 million for the spot. I have no idea if it's going to work. You pay your money, you take your chances."

    On the topic of pay per click, Karmazin concluded:

    "That's the worst kind of business model in the world. You don't want to have people know what works. When youknow what works you tend to charge less money than when you have this aura and you're selling this mystique."

    While synonymous with the search business, perhaps Google's most significant legacy will be its organizational obsession with data-driven decision-making. Google's intellectual and strategic impact has encouraged the measurement of -- well -- everything. Today we count our steps, measure our investments, and create "advanced" statistics for our sports. How often do you and a colleague talk about how to measure the effectiveness of that deck, this meeting, or that conference?

    Google measures everything; the world has followed. Still not convinced? Consider how Nielsen (NLSN), among the world's oldest media companies, has changed.

    Long known as the official ratings firm, companies and careers have lived or died based on Nielsen's ratings. The Internet caught the company by surprise, creating room for upstarts like Comscore (SCOR). Struggling to contend with the rapidly changing landscape in digital, Nielsen was taken private in 2006 by a collection of private equity shops that eventually recruited General Electric (GE) legend David Calhoun as CEO. In 2009, Calhoun hired Steve Hasker, the top partner in McKinsey's media practice, to reinvent the Nielsen's measurement service for the digital age.

    Five years later, Nielsen has emerged as a digital trailblazer. The corporate strategy remains intact: Be the third-party measurement standard for the global $212 billion video advertising industry. However, technology has forced significant changes for the 40,000-person firm, given that there were only a mere four channels 30 years ago; 30 channels 20 years ago; 300 channels 10 years ago; and video programming everywhere today.

    The overwhelming share of global video advertising is purchased for traditional television programming. Nielsen's ratings have been the subject of frustration for decades of television history.

    Hasker and his team undertook two major initiatives to create more precise numbers.

    First, Nielsen created deep data partnerships with Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR), and Experian to make their panel reporting considerably more accurate. Among the original big data companies, Nielsen integrated massive new data sets by negotiating a Facebook partnership that validates the age, gender, and location of their panelists by accessing Facebook's 1.2 billion profiles worldwide. Nielsen maintains its representative panels (a notion that critics continue to loathe), but they now validate panelists with a variety of partnerships.