????12年前的2002年，也就是谷歌上市前的一年，時任傳媒巨頭維亞康姆公司（Viacom）CEO的梅爾?卡馬金造訪了谷歌公司（Google）的總部。卡馬金是一個傳奇廣告銷售人（此君可以說是《廣告狂人》中的唐?德雷伯的真人版），他在谷歌總部會見了谷歌的“三巨頭”埃里克?施密特、拉里?佩奇和謝爾蓋?布林。撮合這次會面的是在業內備受信任、人緣極好的艾倫公司（Allen and Company）風投家南茜?佩雷茨曼。

????谷歌的團隊在這次會見中向卡馬金解釋了網絡搜索廣告的收費機制，也就是說，只有當有人點擊了一幅廣告，廣告主才需要向谷歌付費。據《紐約客》（New Yorker ）記者、《被谷歌：我們所知的世界末日》（Googled: The End of the World As We Know It）一書的作者肯?奧雷塔描述，卡馬金被這次演示震驚得目瞪口呆。最后，他總算意識到，谷歌將對按次收費的電視和廣告業形成多么重大的威脅，不禁惱羞成怒。

????當時，卡馬金用這樣一句話對谷歌三巨頭概括了傳統媒體和數字媒體之間越來越緊張的關系：

????據奧雷塔的書說，卡馬金當時說的是：“你們他媽的是用這種魔法胡搞呢！”

????大概沒有一句話能比卡馬金的這句美國國罵更能形象地反映傳統媒體界的敵意了。卡馬金提供了充足的解釋以支持自己的觀點，奧雷塔也一絲不茍地將它全部記錄在了自己的書里。

????“你要想在‘超級碗’上買一個廣告位，就得付250萬美元的場地費。我不知道這個廣告能帶來多大效益。你得自己掏錢，自己承擔風險。”

????對于按點擊量收費，卡馬金是這樣評論的：

????“這是世界上最糟糕的一種業務模式。你不會想讓人們知道什么才是有效益的。如果他們知道了什么才是有效益的，那么到時候你收的費用肯定不如你賣氣氛、賣神秘感的時候多。”

????除了搜索業務，谷歌另一個最顯著的遺產就是，整個公司都癡迷于基于數據的決策。在谷歌的智力和戰略的影響下，我們已經習慣對任何事都用數據衡量一番。今天人們就連跑步時也得揣著一個計步器，對投資無疑也要做衡量，就連看一場球都有人建立“先進”的統計方法對兩隊分析來分析去。你和你的同事是不是也經常談論應該怎么樣衡量這個會議或那個會議的效果？

????谷歌幾乎什么都衡量，全世界也在跟風。你還不信？那你不妨想想全球最老牌的傳媒公司之一的尼爾森公司（Nielsen）所發生的變化。

????尼爾森一直被視為一家權威評級機構，它的評級甚至可以左右一些企業和職業的生死。但互聯網的崛起殺了尼爾森一個措手不及，給康姆斯克（Comscore）這樣的后起之秀創造了空間。在日新月益的數字時代經歷了一番垂死掙扎后，尼爾森公司于2006年被幾家私募股權公司聯手私有化，并且挖來了通用電氣（General Electric）傳奇人物大衛?卡爾霍恩擔任CEO。2009年，卡爾霍恩又將麥肯錫媒體業務的高級合作人史蒂夫?哈斯克招至麾下，徹底重組尼爾森的評級業務，使之適應數字時代的要求。

????五年后，尼爾森公司重新崛起為數字時代的弄潮兒。尼爾森的企業戰略仍然不變：繼續做視頻廣告行業的第三方衡量標準（全球視頻廣告行業的市值高達2120億美元）。但科技的進步促使這家擁有40000名員工的大公司不得不做出一些重大的變革——畢竟30年前美國只有4個頻道，20年前只有30個頻道，10年前已經有了300個頻道，而如今的視頻節目已經遍地開花。

????全球視頻廣告有壓倒性的比例都被企業買來投放在傳統的電視節目上。幾十年來，每次尼爾森的收視率評級一出，無數廣告主都會垂頭喪氣。

????哈斯克和他的團隊采取了兩大舉措建立更精確的數據。

????首先，尼爾森公司與Facebook、Twitter和益百利（Experian）等公司建立了深厚的數據合作關系，使他們的報告大大提高了精確度。在幾大原始大數據公司之中，尼爾森公司通過與Facebook展開合作，整合了大量的新數據組，包括通過訪問Facebook的12億用戶的個人資料來確定調查樣本的年齡、性別和地理位置。尼爾森仍然保持著它的代表性樣本（雖然這個概念經常被批評者詬病），但是他們現在改為通過一系列合作伙伴來確定代表性樣本。

????A decade ago, in the year before Google went public in 2003, then-Viacom (VIA) CEO Mel Karmazin, a legendary (if not Don Draper-like) ad salesmen, visited Goole's corporate headquarters, the Googleplex. Nancy Peretsman, the deeply connected and trusted Allen and Company investment banker, had set up the meeting between Karmazin and the Google management troika of Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.

????At that session, the Google team explained how cost per click worked for the veteran outdoor, radio, and television salesman. Google (GOOG) advertisers only paid when somebody clicked on their ad. According to Ken Auletta, longtime New Yorker media correspondent and author ofGoogled: The End of the World As We Know It, Karmazin was dumbfounded by the presentation. Eventually he grew angry as he realized how threatening Google was to the historically under-measured television and radio industries.

????At that point, Karmazin turned to Google founders and summarized the growing tensions between traditional and digital media:

????"You guys are fucking with the magic," Karmazin said, according to Auletta's book.

????Perhaps no sentence better encapsulates the defensiveness of the traditional media business more than Karmazin's colorful observation. The executive provided ample commentary to support his thesis through additional quotes that Auletta meticulously documents in his book.

????"You buy a commercial in the Super Bowl, you're going to pay $2.5 million for the spot. I have no idea if it's going to work. You pay your money, you take your chances."

????On the topic of pay per click, Karmazin concluded:

????"That's the worst kind of business model in the world. You don't want to have people know what works. When youknow what works you tend to charge less money than when you have this aura and you're selling this mystique."

????While synonymous with the search business, perhaps Google's most significant legacy will be its organizational obsession with data-driven decision-making. Google's intellectual and strategic impact has encouraged the measurement of -- well -- everything. Today we count our steps, measure our investments, and create "advanced" statistics for our sports. How often do you and a colleague talk about how to measure the effectiveness of that deck, this meeting, or that conference?

????Google measures everything; the world has followed. Still not convinced? Consider how Nielsen (NLSN), among the world's oldest media companies, has changed.

????Long known as the official ratings firm, companies and careers have lived or died based on Nielsen's ratings. The Internet caught the company by surprise, creating room for upstarts like Comscore (SCOR). Struggling to contend with the rapidly changing landscape in digital, Nielsen was taken private in 2006 by a collection of private equity shops that eventually recruited General Electric (GE) legend David Calhoun as CEO. In 2009, Calhoun hired Steve Hasker, the top partner in McKinsey's media practice, to reinvent the Nielsen's measurement service for the digital age.

????Five years later, Nielsen has emerged as a digital trailblazer. The corporate strategy remains intact: Be the third-party measurement standard for the global $212 billion video advertising industry. However, technology has forced significant changes for the 40,000-person firm, given that there were only a mere four channels 30 years ago; 30 channels 20 years ago; 300 channels 10 years ago; and video programming everywhere today.

????The overwhelming share of global video advertising is purchased for traditional television programming. Nielsen's ratings have been the subject of frustration for decades of television history.

????Hasker and his team undertook two major initiatives to create more precise numbers.

????First, Nielsen created deep data partnerships with Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR), and Experian to make their panel reporting considerably more accurate. Among the original big data companies, Nielsen integrated massive new data sets by negotiating a Facebook partnership that validates the age, gender, and location of their panelists by accessing Facebook's 1.2 billion profiles worldwide. Nielsen maintains its representative panels (a notion that critics continue to loathe), but they now validate panelists with a variety of partnerships.