One of Nielsen‘s newest audience-measurement products has won accreditation from the Media Rating Council, setting up a new option for advertisers at a moment when the media-tabulation giant has been facing competition from a group of upstarts and rivals.
Nielsen said its Big Data + Panel national audience measurement technology, which relies on information about smart-TV screen viewership as well as the company’s usual panel of consumers, passed the scrutiny of the MRC, an independent organization that vets all forms of media measurement for the U.S. industry. Nielsen is the first to gain accreditation for the technology. The new data comes from audience interactions with cable and satellite set-top boxes and smart TVs across 45 million households and 75 million devices.
Nielsen said it would endorse the new measure for use as currency in the industry’s next “upfront” market, when TV networks and streamers try to the bulk of their commercial inventory in advance.
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“The accreditation of Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel is a landmark moment for TV ratings, as it will forever change audience measurement,” said Karthik Rao, Nielsen CEO, in a prepared statement. “No one else pairs a high quality, representative panel with a data set this large, pulling from smart TVs and set top boxes in more than 45 million homes. I believe Big Data + Panel gives the industry the most accurate measurement in the history of TV. We’re grateful to our clients for helping us innovate once again.”
The approval is the latest won by Nielsen after a series of setbacks in 2021, when the company lost backing for its national ratings service for months following claims of underreporting audiences amid the coronavirus pandemic. In November, Nielsen won approval for the use of first-party live streaming data from the media companies whose viewership it tabulates, a move that both Amazon and the National Football League backed aggressively. The two are partners in “Thursday Night Football,” a streaming-only sportscast.
The NFL also backed the accreditation of the latest technology. “The NFL continues to support Nielsen’s efforts to modernize measurement so we can all benefit from accurate insights in an increasingly fragmented media marketplace,” said Paul Ballew, the NFL’s chief data and analytic officer, in a statement. “The accreditation of their Big Data solution is a significant step in the journey and we commend Nielsen for their efforts.”
Nielsen has come under new pressure in recent months as media clients such as Paramount Global, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal test new alliances with upstart measurement services such as VideoAmp, Comscore and iSpot. All three of these companies have gained traction in recent years with TV networks as well as some of the big media-buying agencies that purchase commercial inventory on behalf of big advertisers. Paramount in September said it was no longer using Nielsen data after coming to an impasse with the company on pricing for a contract renewal. CBS has been relying on VideoAmp for audience data.
Yet the newest MRC decision appears to show the measurement giant taking some of the strides that TV networks demanded. Many have grown increasingly vocal about the need to find other measurement technologies to count audiences who stream their favorites, rather than watching them at a regular day and time each week via a linear TV network.
“MRC has completed and evaluated rigorous audits of Nielsen’s National Service and its new components, including first party streaming (thus far consisting of select NFL games) and the integration of big data,” said George Ivie, the MRC’s CEO, in a statement. “We have now approved the integration of big data so this combined methodology can be considered MRC accredited; we appreciate Nielsen’s inclusion of this in the MRC accreditation process.”
Nielsen believes the new technology can help do more than plan where advertising ought to be placed. Based on this tabulation of audience response, companies might make decisions about content programming and licensing or carriage fees in distribution deals. This measurement innovation can be utilized to support the media industry beyond advertising planning and buying, by helping to inform content programming and licensing decisions, along with carriage fees for TV distribution deals.