measurement

Sinclair Broadcast Group and its advanced marketing services company Compulse have picked Oracle Moat to measure media performance across more than 300 digital properties. Oracle Moat Analytics will help advertisers determine traffic metrics, viewability metrics and brand safety rates for ad campaigns.

Nielsen has begun internal tests of its new multimedia audience measurement methodology, Nielsen One, and will begin testing it with clients next year, the company’s top management executives said during a briefing with a Wall Street securities firm. “Most of the methodology is built from Big Data sources like [connected TV] makers and Roku, but Nielsen’s panel remains vital to calibrating the data for fraudulent accounts, non-viewed content (e.g., streaming or set-top box showing video, but TV is off) and better accounting for underrepresented audiences,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Daniel Salmon disclosed in a report sent to investors.

Comscore reported improved results for this year’s third quarter, and also took the opportunity to announce that it’s in talks to get its measurement solutions used as currency during the next television upfront. The company is “in the middle of discussions with national TV networks to use Comscore’s measurement, as currency especially, as we move into next year’s upfront market,” CEO Bill Livek told investors during the earnings call.

Integral Ad Science (IAS) this morning announced it has been accredited by the Media Rating Council for impression and viewability measurement and reporting of display and video ads across Facebook and Instagram.

The change comes as Nielsen adds BBO homes to its local TV measurement.

The Association of National Advertisers has announced plans to test that a cross-media measurement system from advertising software/data company VideoAmp in the U.S. The news is the latest development in a push by advertisers and media to broaden their measurement options amid the controversy over Nielsen’s undercounting of TV audiences during the pandemic’s height and its loss of MRC accreditation.

After a difficult period earlier this year, when Nielsen was criticized for undercounting national TV viewers, the media measurement company says business has been good of late. Nielsen says third quarter revenue was up 5.5% to $882 million — with its audience measurement business gaining 3.9% to $637 million and its Outcomes & Content unit improving 9.9% to $245 million. Net income was $103 million versus $10 million in the year-ago period.

Variety and Twitter have partnered on what Variety calls “a unique, first-of-its-kind chart” that ranks the most tweeted about TV shows across network television and streaming. The three Variety Trending TV charts, powered by Twitter, will detail the top 10 programs that are organically bubbling up on the social platform, analyze the day-to-day movement of the top three shows and provide a heat map of which shows are resonating across the country.

Nielsen is defending its use of old-school panels to measure TV viewing as much of the business looks to rely more on Big Data to create alternatives to the ratings measurement firm that has infuriated and dominated the industry for decades.

Nielsen rolled out a new brand identity today at the start of Advertising Week in New York.

NBCUniversal announced members of its Measurement Innovation Forum, a group aimed at looking at the way media and advertising is measured and creating alternatives to Nielsen, which has monopolized the industry. Measurement companies are not included in the forum. Advertisers participating include Citicorp, Ford, L’Oreal, Rocket Mortgage, Target and Volkswagen.

Comscore said today it has begun measuring viewing across YouTube and YouTube TV across YouTube’s biggest platforms, including personal computers, mobile devices and connected TV. Comscore will be able to provide metrics for de-duplicated viewing of campaigns on YouTube and YouTube TV for advertisers and measure the co-viewing of content on CTV screens.

Nielsen says it now captures 100% of streaming minutes viewed on the TV glass, 75% of CTV media spend and 87% of total video digital spend across computer, mobile and connected TV.

Executives from Dentsu, Publicis Media, UM Worldwide and E.W. Scripps entertained the prospect of buyers and sellers being their own source of TV audience data in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s TV2025 last week, prompted by the industry’s threadbare patience with Nielsen.

The network aims for “symmetry” by having agencies use the same tool for currency as for planning.

Conceding that the transition to video streaming has resulted in a scarcity of available program performance data, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos told interviewer Kara Swisher during Monday’s Code Conference in Beverly Hills that Netflix is going to make an effort to change things. “We’re trying to be more transparent with the market and talent and everybody,” Sarandos said. “It’s a big black box for everybody.”

The TV networks aren’t the only ones who think their audiences need to be counted differently. Big media-buying agencies and even a few advertisers are likely to help as the TV industry battles with Nielsen and continues to push for alternate systems of counting video viewers, whether they watch via traditional linear TV or a new streaming-video hub.

The new initiative is designed to “formally mobilize a highly effective group of the top strategic minds in research, analytics and insights from TV publisher companies to accelerate the pace of overdue innovation in media measurement and currency.”

In a letter sent today to advertisers, agencies, broadcasters and others in the media industry, David Kenny CEO of the firm, which in August had its national and local TV panels lose their third-party accreditation, promised to accelerate the rollout of Nielsen One, the company’s forthcoming cross-platform measurement tool that aims to solve some of the industry’s most nagging measurement problems — but is not projected to be fully implemented until 2024.

The TV industry is trying to figure out how it will do business in a world where Nielsen is no longer the dominant measurement company. On Sept. 1, the Media Rating Council stripped its seal of approval from Nielsen’s national TV measurement product, long the industry’s gold standard. “The only thing we know for sure is how dissatisfied a lot of the networks are and how serious they are about advancing measurement,” said Sean Muller, CEO of iSpot.TV, one of the companies hoping to move into any void created by Nielsen’s issues.

The company faces a double whammy: challenges in its legacy products and customers looking for alternative ways to measure streaming viewership.

TV viewers can watch their favorite programs any way they want. If media executives aren’t careful, the industry will soon be counting those people in equally chaotic fashion. A suspension of Media Rating Council backing for Nielsen’s venerable national and local TV ratings service, announced Wednesday, offers the clearest signal yet of the breakdown of the industry’s ability to measure the audiences that watch comedies, dramas, news broadcasts and sports matches. The problem is not likely to be solved anytime soon.

Nielsen’s decades-old track record of measuring the TV business was dealt a serious blow Wednesday after the MRC decided to suspend its backing of the company’s national ratings service and also cancel an agreed-upon hiatus for its support of Nielsen’s local TV efforts as well.

NBCUniversal said more companies have asked to be included in its search for a better systems for measuring its various businesses, including television viewership. The company is now reviewing more than 70 responses.

As NBCUniversal puts Nielsen on notice, pressing questions arise of what a new ad measurement system should include. The answer must come out of studying Nielsen’s pain points and navigating privacy issues with which digital media currently grapple.

NBCUniversal intends to identify a group of partners for its ambitious measurement plans by mid September — and traditional measurement companies like Nielsen and Comscore are in the mix, the company disclosed Tuesday.

NBCUniversal, which has sparred publicly with Nielsen in recent years, has issued a call for “measurement independence” in the media industry. In an open letter, NBCU did not say it would outright shun Nielsen, which remains the dominant force in measurement despite challenges from Comscore and others. But it urged all measurement companies to offer alternative means of tracking viewing across linear TV and digital platforms.

Dave Morgan: “There was a time when the media measurement market was pretty simple. You had Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers for newspaper ad buys, BPA for magazines, Arbitron for radio and Nielsen for TV. No more. Digital disruption, the rise of performance advertising — and, most importantly, massive and accelerating audience fragmentation across an expanding number of media channels, suppliers and devices — are to blame.”

Under well-deserved pressure from the Video Advertising Bureau and the Media Rating Council — not to mention Discovery’s David Zaslav — Nielsen is facing a potentially existential moment. It would do well not to revert to its usual defensive crouch and, instead, engage in a straightforward and transparent dialogue with its clients.

The multiyear agreement Includes measurement for all Meredith local stations and includes Nielsen Scarborough.

The second quarter loss was $18.5 million, or 28 cents a share, compared to a loss of $10.4 million, or 15 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue slid to $87.7 million from $88.6 million a year ago.

Discovery President-CEO David Zaslav ramped up his ire for TV ratings giant Nielsen during a Tuesday conference call tied to Discovery’s second-quarter earnings. The future calls for “better data” than the long-standing measurement currency company offers, Zaslav said. “Unfortunately, Nielsen is a whiff. And it’s just massively disappointing. We have lost money. Everyone has lost money. You’re dealing with a very antiquated delivery system.”

A year after Nielsen left the field of digital out-of-home media measurement, one of the field’s highest profile suppliers, GSTV (Gas Station TV), has signed with Comscore to utilize its fledgling place-based media audience measurement service. As part of the agreement, Comscore said it will report digital ad impressions, reach and frequency for each market and demographic GSTV sells as part of its national video advertising network.

The television attribution provider and ad monitoring company is based in Paris. The companies said that TVTY will complement and expand Nielsen’s TV attribution and ad intel services.

In what appears to be an industry first, the Advertising Research Foundation is teaming with seven industry research and/or media suppliers to conduct research on digital device usage and account sharing, which it plans to ultimately launch as a syndicated measurement service. As part of the announcement, the ARF said it would apply to the Media Rating Council to accredit the service in its “second year of execution.”