NBC Universal names Google and ComScore as Olympic research partners

The broadcaster wants to understand how video content is consumed across platforms, including TV, mobiles, PCs and tablet devices.

Google’s work involves a panel of 3,000 people while ComScore will draw a sample of several hundred Olympics enthusiasts from its recently built TV/Online panel of 10,000 people. Viewing activity will be monitored using a mix of set-top box data, electronic meters and self-reporting.

NBC Universal said additional research partnerships would be announced soon. At the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Arbitron, ComScore, Omniture and Keller Fay all contributed to NBC’s Billion Dollar Lab.

Research president Alan Wurtzel said: “Cross-platform measurement is extraordinarily challenging, but we believe the unique and complementary nature of these research projects will bring us one step closer to cracking the code of single-source measurement.”