Mike Hess
CRE Chair

Welcome to the CRE website!

The Council for Research Excellence consists of 35+ senior research professionals who are all Nielsen media clients. As such, we represent advertisers, agencies, networks, cable companies etc. Since the CRE was formed in 2005 we have worked together in the spirit of collegiality on projects that we believe will have value at the industry level. Although formed by Nielsen and funded by them, we cherish our independence as a research “think tank” with the right to conduct research on what the CRE judges to be of industry-wide importance.

Our first such completed research project is the Video Consumer Mapping study, introduced to Nielsen clients, and to the industry in general, on March 26, 2009. You can read more about this groundbreaking study about “how people really behave with media” through the links shown on this website. I believe that the entire CRE membership is justifiably proud of this research because we are sure that its key conclusions will have a major, ongoing impact on how the industry thinks about media in general; multi-tasking in particular; and the actual relationship between classic and digital media.

One of our basic working premises is that there is an ongoing knowledge gap in our industry because certain research studies are simply too big and/or too costly for any single company to handle. Due to its size and funding, the CRE is ideally suited to address that gap. Beyond the Mapping study, we also have several other works in progress right now as well. Feel free to click on the links and check out those projects too! Finally, if you’d like to make a contribution of your own to one of these studies (even though you might not be a CRE member), please feel free to contact the committee chairperson directly or our Facilitator Richard Zackon at rzackon@researchexcellence.com.  

Thanks for visiting our website!

Mike Hess
CRE Chair