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Nielsen wants to reclaim its reputation as a fully accredited TV measurement service.
On Wednesday, Nielsen moved a little closer to that goal by announcing Media Rating Council accreditation for its Big Data + Panel measurement solution, which includes older panels and larger data sets. The solution is part of Nielsen’s cross-platform measurement service, Nielsen ONE.
This offering will be Nielsen’s approved currency for this year’s inaugural season, although only its older panels will still be available to buyers who request it.
Nielsen measurement plan
Nielsen has come a long way since being accused by programmers of undercounting viewership during the pandemic and beyond lost MRC accreditation for national and local assessments in 2021.
Nielsen has been ever since incorporating more advanced TV viewing data to its measurement platform in response to demands from both buyers and sellers for more detailed ad measurement.
In April Nielsen regained accreditation for national television ratings and in November that received accreditation to integrate first-party streaming data into its dashboards. It still lacks accreditation for local assessment.
The newly accredited Big Data + Panel tool is a milestone, CEO Karthik Rao said in a statement. “It gives the industry the most accurate measurement in TV history,” he said, by reading data from 75 million smart TVs and set-top boxes in more than 45 million homes.
Beyond its legacy audience panels, Nielsen is reaching out viewership data through partnerships with program distributors including Vizio, Roku and DirecTV.
Currency transfers
In other words, Nielsen hopes it can hold on to the video currency crown despite three passionate competitors – Comscore, iSpot and VideoAmp – are relentlessly trying to dethrone the TV ratings holders.
Nielsen’s alternative measurement providers have spent the past few years forming partnerships and building competitive differentiation to capitalize on frustrations with Nielsen.
But despite grows gradually every year when it comes to upfront commitments, they still don’t bag a sufficiently significant market share by Nielsen.
Buyers and sellers have relied on Nielsen’s numbers to justify their advertising investments for decades, and old habits die hard—especially as Nielsen keeps adding better and more complex data sets to Nielsen ONE.
Which isn’t to say that Nielsen’s competitors don’t stand a chance. Some of them offer things that Nielsen lacks for the upcoming inaugural season.
Comscore has, for example MRC accreditation for local television ratings (except national), which Nielsen doesn’t currently have. Nielsen separates its national and local products, and because Nielsen favors national, it rates this product first through MRC audits. Comscore, on the other hand, gets its accreditation for both local and national ratings for buyers during the advance.
VideoAmp also benefits from a relationship with perhaps the only broadcaster not under contract with Nielsen. Paramount cleared the deal with Nielsen expires in Octoberciting unsustainably high costs as one of the reasons he relies on VideoAmp.
VideoAmp recently he announced that it has guaranteed $3 billion in video currency from the end of 2024.
As for where buyers are putting their dollars in the coming broadcast year, we’ll have to wait and see how the initial negotiations shake out in a few months.
