Nielsen

Spanish-TV giant TelevisaUnivsion wants to speak a different language than its English-speaking rivals when it comes to audience measurement. “We all know that today’s TV measurement is inadequate for our multi-screen world, and as a consequence, U.S Hispanics have been undercounted,” says Donna Speciale, president of U.S. ad sales and marketing at the company. “In fact, our audience is 26% bigger than current measurement. How did we get that information? Nielsen just told us,” she says, using its traditional panel-based tabulation as well as its “big data” product. “This is huge and and a huge step for equity,” she adds, noting that TelevisaUnivision will ask all agencies and clients to base this year’s upfront ad deals on that measurement.

Buyers and sellers are still playing with alternative currencies such as VideoAmp, iSpot are Comscore, but nothing will take the place of C3/C7 ratings in a majority of this year’s upfront sales. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Nielsen said the Alpha version of its Nielsen One system designed to measure the consumption of content is now being used by clients including The Walt Disney Co., Mediahub, Sony Pictures Television, TelevisaUnivision, AMC Networks and Horizon Media. The Alpha version focuses on program-level measurement across platforms. It will be more broadly released in late 2024, Nielsen said.

The 2023 contest becomes the most-watched after previously ranking third. The viewership total was revised from 113 million to 115.1 million across Fox, Fox Deportes and streaming after it was discovered Nielsen had miscounted the audience due to encoding errors.

Hours after Nielsen issued a notice to clients Thursday reaffirming its support of Media Rating Council (MRC), it received its own endorsement from a strange bedfellow: Rival audience measurement service Comscore. “Comscore joins with Nielsen in support of MRC accreditation and their call for greater trust and transparency in the selling process and for currency that is informed by big data.” Comscore’s statement was issued just before OpenAP’s and the VAB’s “joint industry committee (JIC) began its upfront-style pitch on its ad currency certification plans to the ad industry in New York City Thursday afternoon.

On the eve of television’s upfront advertising market, Nielsen released a statement to clients urging them to use its legacy panels-only measurement system as currency, but said it will make its big-data plus panels measurement available for clients who want to use that to transact.

The U.S. Joint Industry Committee is preparing to answer the company’s concerns.

After being suspended for 19 months, the Media Rating Council has reinstated the ratings service.

The multi-year deal includes local TV stations, national networks and a regional cable channel.

The new capability includes feeds that have unique, streamed content that is not available on the station’s over-the-air channels or direct-to-cable station feeds.

In February — typically a slower-moving month for TV consumption — total time watching TV for persons two years of age and up declined 5.1% compared to January, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge measure. Still, while other major categories fell, streaming platforms continued to pace upwards — adding 1.5 percentage points from January to a leading 34.3% share of time spent viewing — another record for the digital video format.

Despite dubious transparency and questionable methodologies, Nielsen remains a preeminent presence in measuring domestic TV audiences. And it’s monthly “Gauge” market share tracker, introduced in 2021, has continued to draw attention. On Wednesday, Nielsen released its latest graphic, highlighting U.S. TV usage for January. “Streaming” occupied 38.1% of the overall viewing pie. That’s up nearly 10% from the 28.9% it registered in Nielsen’s comparable “Gauge” from January 2022.

While broadcast viewing got its usual boost in January from heavy NFL sports viewing, on a year-over-year basis it was down 6% from January 2022, according to Nielsen’s Gauge, which measures total day viewing by persons two years of age and up. Broadcast content rose 2.1% in January from December, which gave it a 24.9% share.

The newly formed Joint Industry Committee aims to set measurement, currency standards by an aggressive March 1 deadline. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Netflix has expanded its measurement deal with Nielsen. Under the terms of the deal, Netflix will now subscribe to Nielsen’s national TV content measurement and streaming TV data services.

The measurement companies looking to offer alternatives to Nielsen were mostly supportive of the move announced Monday by major programmers to create a Joint Industry Committee that will standardize and design multiple currencies for buying and selling advertising.

Xandr head of research Pete Doe joins Nielsen, research chief Mainak Mazumdar exits.

The National Football League said it worked with Nielsen on a special study looking at viewing of its games on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24) in group settings and found its games reach an average of more than 20 million additional viewers. According to the study, the games had an average-minute audience of 44.1 million viewers, up 31% from the 33.6 million Nielsen initially reported.

NBCUniversal says its advertisers had hundreds of millions of reasons to be thankful over the Thanksgiving weekend — one of the business shopping periods of the year. Across its portfolio NBCU’s programming — as measured by Nielsen — reached 121 million people aged 2 and up. Data from measurement company iSpot.tv shows the ads on NBCU properties reached 128 million adults.

Never mind those weekly Nielsen program rankings showing that Netflix still dominates engagement, Prime has more subs, research company says.

Peter Bradbury had been with the measurement company for 26 years. (Image: Nielsen)

Nielsen’s monthly snapshot of TV use shows streaming platforms commanding 37.3% of viewing time in the United States, up from 36.9% in September. Streaming has grown for eight straight months, according to Nielsen, and has led all platforms for four months in a row. Broadcast viewing rose by 10 percent over September and added 1.8 share points thanks to big growth among dramas and sports.

The Media Rating Council decided that it is not ready to re-accredit Nielsen’s television ratings service just as the measurement company is getting ready to launch its new Nielsen One system. The decision led Nielsen critics to renew their objections to Nielsen going forward with Nielsen One. Despite industry criticism and increased activity with alternative measurement providers, Nielsen remains the predominant currency for buying and selling billions of dollars worth of advertising.

The start of the World Series and the annual “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons gave Fox a bigger presence than usual in Nielsen’s seven-day ratings. CBS’s NCIS, meanwhile, became the first entertainment show of the 2022-23 season to break the 10 million-viewer mark with a week of delayed viewing.

By Nielsen’s count, 7.8 million people watched Amazon Prime’s coverage of last Thursday’s NFL game between New Orleans and Arizona. But Amazon says no, there were actually 8.9 million people watching. So which is it? You’ll have to judge for yourself. After each of its Thursday night games this season, Amazon has publicly contracted Nielsen in this manner. Neither company is saying the other is wrong, but neither is backing down, either. The result is confusion, most notably for advertisers.

The agreement provides a suite of Nielsen and Gracenote solutions to power engagement of U.S. Hispanics across Spanish-language media.

Nielsen has told the FCC it is working on a product to analyze “behind the camera” as well as on-screen diversity that could give the agency most of the information it may be looking for without making programmers and distributors, including streamers owned by media companies with FCC licenses, have to certify that information.

Nielsen Holdings said that it completed its sale to a group of private equity investors led by Elliott Investment Management and Brookfield Business Partners. The deal is valued at $16 billion, including the assumption of debt. The change of control happens at a time when media companies and media buyers are more actively exploring alternatives to Nielsen as currency for buying and selling advertising.

The media-measurement giant has entered into a pact with streaming portal Roku that calls for Nielsen to track viewership across traditional and connected TV watching, desktop usage and mobile screens. Advertisers who use Roku can get data on the reach of their commercials among Roku users that will rely on so-called “deduplicated” audiences, or people who aren’t seeing the same content on different viewing platforms.

Streaming consumption continues to break records, claiming 35% of total TV usage in August 2022, while audience engagement across platforms is starting to vary depending on where the big-name content is, according to Nielsen’s latest update of The Gauge, a monthly look at how consumers watch content across top TV platforms. Streaming was also up 22.6% year-over-year in August.

Amazon paid big bucks for the exclusive national broadcast rights to stream NFL Thursday Night Football starting this season, but 48% of the viewership for Prime Video’s first preseason game came via local broadcast, according to TVB. Stations in San Francisco and Houston delivered 494,135 impressions.

Nielsen, which has been touting that Nielsen One, its new cross-platform measurement system, is on track, quietly informed clients last week that the “big data” on which the platform relies isn’t ready to be used to make transactions. Nielsen had planned to include its big data — information on viewing from set-top boxes and smart TVs — in its national TV ratings in September and have clients use it as currency in the scatter advertising market. Nielsen has been trying to get its new national ratings system incorporating big data accredited by the Media Rating Council but a meeting scheduled for today (Aug. 25) was postponed.

Streaming TV is now No. 1, with its share of viewing in July topping cable TV for the first time, according to new figures from Nielsen. Streaming had a 38.8% share of viewing in July, up 3.2% from June and jumping 22.6% from a year ago. That beat cable, which was down 2% from June and 8.9% from a year ago with a 34.4% share. Broadcast had a 21.6% share, down 3.7% from June and 9.8% lower than a year ago..

The e-commerce giant wants to give advertisers familiar ratings but hints that it will also leverage purchase data.

With the coming of its new cross-platform media-measurement service Nielsen One next year, Nielsen says all its media panels have seen growth — including its highly scrutinized national TV panel, which has grown to more than 42,000 homes and 101,000 “directly measured viewers.” Nielsen’s national TV panel has been measuring around 36,000 to 38,000 viewers, according to third-party estimates, during the pandemic periods in 2020 and 2021.

Shares of media-measurement giant Nielsen surged Tuesday after the purveyor of TV ratings said its largest shareholder reached an initial agreement to support a $10 billion buyout of the TV ratings company by a a group of private-equity firms.

Nielsen Holdings said Friday it has received all of the necessary government regulatory approvals it needs to complete its plan to be acquired by a group of private equity funds led by Elliott Investment Management and Brookfield  Business Partners for about $16 billion. Shareholders will be able to vote on the $28 a share transaction at two meetings set for Aug. 9.