Disrupt what? Building custom hardware boxes and paying people to gather their behavioral data? I can't see a lot of young hackers jumping on this problem. Nie

Disrupt what? Building custom hardware boxes and paying people to gather their behavioral data? I can't see a lot of young hackers jumping on this problem. Nielsen's actual business is getting data (staggeringly enormous amounts of data - not just TV watching but consumer purchase data, retail POS data, etc), and then leveraging it. If you want to disrupt something, it's the collection and use/sale of this information. However, there is a strong network effect here. The value of the data you collect is proportional to how established you are and how much participation/penetration you have in an industry. Big companies (like TV/media companies, retail chains, and manufacturers) want big data from big providers. They want large amounts of reliable data that speaks for an entire industry, nationwide and worldwide, to inform their very-high-dollar decisions. If you can collect that, and convince e.g. Walmart that your data is worth buying, go for it!