Nielsen confident of measuring up in an iPod world.

With viewers getting their TV fixes on their computers, and even their iPods, what's a rating company to do?

That's the question facing Nielsen Media Research, which not that long ago knew just where to find its target audience--seated on the living room couch.

But with the days rapidly vanishing when virtually all broadcast viewing occurred in home before traditional television sets, Nielsen announced a bold plan last week to measure content viewership on cell phones, on the Internet and on television sets outside the home.

The plan is "Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement" but what might be missing from the tag is "anyhow."

Despite an ambitious rollout schedule, it remains to be seen whether the company can stay ahead--or even slightly behind--the technological curve with new viewing platforms and devices appearing on the market constantly.

"It's tricky; technology keeps leaping forward," acknowledged Gary Homes, a Nielsen spokesman. "Advances not available 3 or 4 years ago are available today and 3 or 4 years from now there will be things we don't know about now."

The initiative, also dubbed "A2/M2," calls for Nielsen to amass accurate readings of online content viewership by the 2007-2008 broadcast season.

For Internet measurement, Nielsen is planning to test software meters this summer on the home and notebook computers of participating families, which is designed to measure the video and audio they are watching via the Internet. The software meter is still in development, but Nielsen is counting on it being ready by the end of the year.

Nielsen is also planning to develop meters to measure video viewed on portable media devices, and is having its engineers at work to develop a small wireless meter for "Bluetooth" connections. (At the same time electronic measurement devices will replace paper diaries, even for traditional viewers, in all local markets by 2011.)

For their part, ad buyers said the new data will help, but will present challenges as far as how agencies deal with the volume of new information.

"Nielsen could face challenges in meeting their own timeline, but it's still good for us to know what's on the horizon. Computer systems and processing systems still have to be developed to slice and dice all this data we'll be getting," said Sue Johenning, who runs Interpublic Group Inc.'s Initiative Media's broadcast ad-buying arm in Los Angeles.