Today, the company announced a pilot program for the Nielsen Digital Program Ratings which will track TV content viewed online. The pilot starts with a handful of big-name partners – A+E, ABC, AOL, CBS, The CW, Discovery Communications, FOX, NBC and Univision. The pilot is set to begin in May and run through July, but Nielsen is already announcing that the Digital Program Ratings will see a commercial launch. The pilot program is simply serving to “fine-tune” Nielsen’s methods before they hit primetime, or, later streamed on the internet time – whatever.

“The pilot for Nielsen Digital Program Ratings is a major milestone for the industry,” said Eric Solomon, SVP for Global Digital Audience Measurement at Nielsen. “As a companion product to Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, Nielsen Digital Program Ratings will enable clients to better understand the online audience for their programming by harnessing the same methodology Nielsen already uses to measure the audience for related advertising.”

Nielsen says that they will start by measuring TV content viewed online, on computers. For instance, CBS will be able to see Nielsen’s numbers for how many streams their online content got on their official site. During the pilot, initial results will only be shared with clients, but Nielsen hopes to make the data public when the program sees a full launch later this year.

Of course, Nielsen plans to expand the program to “additional content types and devices” in the future. So we’re talking streams from sites like Hulu or YouTube, made on and iPad or Xbox.

Nielsen already has an presence in online metrics, including web content (YouTube videos and such). They also track websites based on visitors. This pilot program marks their first foray into tracking online streams of traditional TV content, however.

“The potential to measure video viewing of specific programs on linear TV as well as the Internet is significant,” said Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development, NBCUniversal. “It’s an important step toward reaching the ‘holy grail’ of true cross-platform measurement.”

It’s an interesting move from Nielsen, but the online viewership tracking won’t really come into its true form until Nielsen is measuring all types of online TV streaming across all types of devices. Although Nielsen is just announcing this pilot program, it’s clear that full inclusion is what they envision.

Trike, a member of gaming forum NeoGAF, reported yesterday that he had gained access to the debug page in Miiverse, Nintendo’s social network for games. Here’s the report from Trike:

I found out I could access the debug menu on Miiverse by hitting the “X” button on the gamepad while hovering over the exit button. I found an admin access list or something to that effect. I couldn’t really do anything from there though. I could view different messages from a developer though. One mentioned that there would be big games coming out(announced?) on the 10th of December. A different said “POKEMON” and “SUICIDE”. Sorry, bro.

I went to another link that lead me to some test messages. I thought they were real when I found them, because they were posted 20 minutes ago from the time I accessed them. I could flag them for prohibited content, spoilers, and something else that I forget.

Then I went to a different link on the debug menu and it showed three different Miiverse subforums I could access that would be coming out on December 20th. I clicked on the “games for teens, kids and blahblah” (forgot the other two, I think family games was one of them?) and it lead to some sort of dispute between Timelord celebrities Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. There were even more subforums for games specifically, including Yoshi’s Island Wii U and Soul Hackers, and less specific ones like “Metal Gear Solid” and “Resident Evils”. By the time I stopped posting on gaf to check for more it was fixed, and someone pointed out that Nintendo put up a tweet about a miiverse fix.

I don’t know if I really could flag posts to be deleted or whatever, but I know I could not make myself an admin or delete admins. At least when I pressed the buttons nothing happened.

Such stories pop up on NeoGAF from time to time, and are quickly debunked. In this case, however, it seems that it was legitimate. Trike not only posted pictures of his time in the Miiverse debug page, but Nintendo themselves confirmed the issue in a statement to Gamesindustry International. The company said that what the user accessed was nothing more than a “mock up menu” and that access to it has now been removed.

Mock up menu or not, the supposed debug page contained a number of interesting tidbits that will fuel rumors for some time. One in particular contained a number of subforums for games that had not been listed on the Miiverse yet. Some of the titles point to unannounced games like Yoshi’s Land Wii U, Donkey Kong, Metroid, and a title called Soul Hackers that might be referring to a Shin Megami Tensei game of the same name. Check it out:

It seems that Trike’s accidental “hack” into the Miiverse has caused some Wii U owners to fear that Nintendo’s network may be easily compromised in the future. Gamers aren’t exactly confident in security anymore after hackers took down Sony’s PlayStation Network for over a month.

Nintendo is still relatively new to this whole online thing, but the company has made some great strides with the Wii U. The company’s services, however, are only as good as its security. We’ll find out in the coming months and years if Nintendo can keep its network safe from those who would want to bring it down.

[h/t: Sophos]

A majority of adults are now using their mobiles to check email or surf the internet.

Pew research also points out that 88% of the adult population in the United States owns a cellphone. Statistically speaking, that means almost half (49%) the adult population is going online via cellphones to check email or use the internet for various purposes.

Sticking with the same theme, over 40% of the respondents from the study said they go online almost daily, or on a typical day. If you refer to the chart below, you can see this mobile internet access trend is growing fast.

Of course, Pew includes all the stats on these folks who are using their cellphones to go online. Take a look at their data on race, gender, income, and several other factors. As usual, they give us a very comprehensive view.

The big news from the presentation was the redesigned Wii U controller which is now dubbed the Wii U Gamepad. Iwata says that the name was referencing the NES controller and how many fans referred to it as a gamepad due to it being flat. The name wasn’t the only change, however, as he confirmed that the Wii U was to have analog sticks instead of the circle pads from last year’s prototype.

The analog sticks were revealed with a leak from Traveler’s Tales last month, but we also noticed two extra buttons that had us all confused. Nintendo explained these two mystery buttons during the presentation as a TV button and an NFC reader/writer. The TV button will allow the Wii U Gamepad to operate independently of the Wii U and become an infrared universal remote. The NFC reader/writer is for scanning in cards or action figures which we saw in the leaked Rayman Legends trailer.

The company also showed off what the Wii U is capable of in the online realm through a bizarre commercial featuring a young man playing a zombie-themed FPS. It’s one of the most bizarre things that Nintendo has ever created and I couldn’t help but laugh at how absurd it was.

As you can see from the commercial, Nintendo is introducing a social networking service directly into their console called the Miiverse. It allows gamers to see what their friends and other people playing the same game are saying. It’s comparable to a constant dialogue running in the background about your favorite games that you can see whenever you hit up the home menu.

One of the things that you will notice in the commercial is that one of the people is browsing the Miiverse on their mobile phone. Nintendo will be bringing Miiverse to the 3DS, PC and browser-enabled mobile devices. It will be available for the Wii U at launch, but the service will be launching at a later date for other platforms.

One of the other components of the Miiverse is called Mii Wara Wara which roughly translates to “the sound of things happening.” It’s meant to relate the concept of people talking about the games they’re playing. You may notice that the Wii U home screen shows a bunch of game icons with Miis gathering around them with speech bubbles talking about said title.

This functionality will also be extended to games as Nintendo showed the same Mii speech bubbles appearing over specific levels in what appears to be New Super Mario Bros. Mii.

Nintendo spent the majority of the presentation talking up the Wii U Gamepad and the Miiverse as ways to expand the gaming audience and make our lives more connected. That’s great and all, but there are some gamers that don’t want that. Nintendo isn’t going to ignore the core this time around as they are also releasing what they call the Wii U Pro Controller for those who want more traditional control methods. It is essentially an Xbox 360 controller but with both analog sticks at the top.

If you want to catch up on all the news revealed during the Nintendo Direct presentation, you can watch it below. Nintendo used this event to focus on the controller and online, so expect nothing but games Tuesday during Nintendo’s press conference. Check back here for our coverage to see what Nintendo has in store for the next year and beyond.

Findings:

• Ad Placement: 31 percent of ads were not in-view, meaning they were never being seen by the audience.
• Targeting audience based on interest over simple demographics (sex, income) has proven effective. 37% of ads delivered reached audiences with known interests relative to their brand.
• Advertisers must keep a watchful eye on the type of content their brand is being associated with. 72 percent of the campaigns felt their ads were being delivery alongside objectionable content.
• Fraud is still a concern. .16% of ads were delivery to non-human targets from the IAB spiders and bots list. Though this number is low, unknown bots and more sophisticated fraud methods were not considered, making this kind of threat difficult to quantify.
• The findings showed that neither ad visibility nor the quality of the audience reached is reflected in the price of digital advertising. Advertisers need to do their own research in finding the best ad buy for their dollar.

These findings outline the necessity of in-depth campaign management throughout the entire length of an ad campaign.

It also demonstrates the need for a “viewable impressions” measurement when calculating the cost for advertising. Too much money is going out the window on ads that are not even being seen by customers.

“With 31% of vCE Charter Study impressions not being viewable, it is now abundantly clear just how important in-view measurement is to online campaign validation,” said Linda Abraham, comScore CMO. “In order for any digital GRP metric to be relevant in the online space and to be cross-media comparable, it must include validated ‘viewable impressions’ in its calculation. While audience and geographic validation are crucial – and should not be ignored – if a digital campaign rating does not also take into account whether or not the ad had the opportunity to be seen, then the metric fails to deliver a true apples-to-apples comparison to all other media.”

Speaking for the Washington State Liquor Control Board, Brian Smith said, “What’s being auctioned today will allow interested parties rights to apply for a liquor license at current location. You’re buying the right to apply for a liquor license and then purchase the right to sell at that location.”

An interesting part of the initiative explains that If you’re a grocery store or big box store with over 10,000 square feet of space you do not have to bid. Not surprising to many residents since Washington-based warehouse chain Costco was a large financial supporter of the initiative donating the majority of $23 million spent (Washington’s single donor contribution record for a state initiative) to capture 59% of the approval votes needed for the measure to pass.