NBCUniversal’s research chief has called the Olympics his “billion-dollar research lab.”
The Games offer a perfect opportunity every two years to analyze how media habits are changing, said Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development at the company, because they deliver a large audience that tunes in to hundreds of hours of coverage across a proliferation of screens over a 17-day period.
For the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro next year, NBCUniversal plans to team up with the television tech company TiVo and RealityMine, a research start-up, to track how people watch the Games on television, mobile and digital platforms.