Internet audience measurement and analysis agency Nielsen//NetRatings has announced a new online multimedia measurement report measuring use of content for the three largest proprietary formats, regardless of the media player or environment.

The new report provides online publishers and content providers a better perspective on the encoding and consumption of rich media content to drive technology decisions, form strategic partnerships and affect the sales of rich media advertising.

The company says that as the Web evolves, it is constantly refining our tracking technology to provide deeper, more insightful media measurement. This new report offers enhanced breakdowns of multimedia activity, responding to requests from the industry for more granular information on which to base business decisions.

Due to the new methodology, this report does not permit comparisons to previously published market sizes and positions. The actual market positions and user bases of the tracked companies remain fundamentally the same.

The new report includes:

1. Unique audience and active reach percents for RealMedia, Windows Media and QuickTime

2. Segmented activity with enhanced breakdowns of multimedia consumption into "audio/video" and "images/text" categories

3. Top requested audio/video content

4. An overall Web multimedia unique audience number using the three proprietary formats