Under the terms of a new agreement, the Nielsen Co. and the National Geographic Channel will gain access to granular data from more than 330,000 set-top boxes in Charter Communication’s Los Angeles system.

The National Geographic Channel (NGC) will be the first network to access new analysis on commercial performances through Nielsen’s DigitalPlus service, which is part of Nielsen’s set-top box analytics business.

The information gleaned from the set-top boxes will complement traditional People Meter ratings data from Nielsen’s samples, and it will allow NGC to develop new analysis in several areas, including commercial and commercial pod ratings with second-by-second granularity, commercial creative retention, and standard-definition v. high-definition measurement.

Nielsen launched its DigitalPlus service last year in order to measure consumer viewing habits from all emerging digital devices. Nielsen said digital set-top box data offers opportunities to supplement traditional panel-based measurement with more granular details of program and commercial performance. The added granularity enables researchers to look at second-by-second tuning behavior among a variety of new metrics.

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