Nielsen

The 4A’s and the Television Bureau of Advertising want Nielsen to move to Live +1 measurement that captures households tuning into or people viewing a program at the actual time it was telecast, plus any delayed viewing within 24 hours of a recorded program.

After 12 years and an eight-figure investment, Nielsen has pulled the plug as the sole funder of the Council for Research Excellence, an independent organization composed of Nielsen clients to conduct their own primary research on media measurement, including methodological ones.

Networks haven’t been getting full credit from Nielsen for all of the people watching live television through streaming services, the ratings firm acknowledged Wednesday, illustrating the pressures on the measurement company to keep up with the rapid evolution of viewing habits.

Steve Hasker, a former McKinsey management consultant who has been a chief architect of restructuring Nielsen over the past several years, has stepped down as global president and COO of the world’s biggest media and marketing research company to become CEO of a new global unit of Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency. Hasker is the most recent of several high-profile executives to depart Nielsen.

Beginning next year, it will integrate Comcast numbers into its local television measurement service.

As promised, Nielsen is releasing more and more viewership measurements it’s mined from Netflix data — including for Stranger Things 2. The company released its latest, and most interesting, SVOD measurement to date on Thursday afternoon — citing an audience of 15.8 million viewers, nearly 11 million of them adults 18-49, watching the sophomore premiere episode, “Chapter One,” within three days of its launch.

A new measurement service, already being used by eight media giants, gives first-ever insights into who is watching streamers — and how those audiences stack up to linear TV.

Content owners are about to get a lot more insight into viewership of shows on Netflix, which has long held such sought-after ratings data close to the vest. Nielsen is offering a new service that will let media subscribers see how many people watched their shows — and their rivals’ shows — on Netflix.

Third-quarter national TV advertising was hit with double-digit declines, according to one industry report — with an estimate of a slight increase in the current fourth quarter. MoffettNathanson Research estimates third-quarter TV network advertising to be off 10% —with Nielsen C3 18-49 primetime viewership sinking 14%.

Of Nielsen’s 210 Designated Market Areas, 51 increased their positions, while 70 dropped in the new 2017-18 rankings. There were five changes in the top 10 markets — Washington, Houston and Atlanta each advancing one spot, knocking San Francisco and Boston down one place each. Of all the moves, the largest was Yakima, Wash.’s eight-spot rise to 114, with Norfolk, Va., posting the biggest drop, falling five slots to 47.

With the new television season in the U.S. now upon us, viewers are able to connect with new program offerings as well as old favorites. While much focus will be on the shows themselves, Nielsen took a look at insights surrounding the advertising inventory — from how much money is spent on advertising over platforms to the commercial ratings lifts of ads beyond seven days to how marketers are leveraging branded integrations.

The ratings rivals explain to broadcasters what they have in store to improve and expand their services and address the five biggest concerns of stations regarding measurement: ratings inconsistency, sample size, demo issues, modeling of ratings and too many methodologies.

The global measurement and data analytics company will integrate the independent provider of multi-touch attribution software into existing Nielsen marketing effectiveness suites.

When asked if Nielsen is still relevant, Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships, said: “Part of the reason the ratings are seemingly going down — and they won’t be going back up — is because of the unfortunate inertia and lack of movement by the only one rating system that we have in this country. That’s Nielsen.”

A 2014 agreement between Nielsen and comScore only gave comScore the ability to use Nielsen’s technology measurements for online and TV audiences, as a “cross-platform” service. The deal, according to Nielsen, did not allow comScore to use the data for an individual “standalone” TV service.

Nielsen is out with its look at TV and digital news consumption: Who watches? Where? And how much? The report of results from Q1 2017 is heavy on local news consumption; its growth, its diversity of viewers and its outsize role. In an average week, local news reached 40% of people in the ad-friendly adults 25-54 demographic. That’s compared to 32% for national broadcast news and 17% for cable news.

Due to disruptions caused by Hurricane Irma in the homes of panelists located in the affected areas, Nielsen has informed clients that ratings for some metered markets will be excluded from release because they failed to meet Nielsen’s “in-tabulation thresholds” for reporting data.

Nielsen said today that its ratings information from this past weekend is delayed because the company’s processing center in Tampa, Fla., was shut down because of Irma. The company’s weekly list of top television programs is usually released Tuesdays, and it’s unclear when it will be ready. It also hasn’t produced overnight ratings this week.

A new Ion Media-commissioned Nielsen study confirms younger, more diverse audiences are increasingly turning to broadcast television.

By deploying Nielsen Marking Cloud’s Data Management Platform, FuboTV aims to provide advertisers with “deep consumer analytics” tied to its subscriber base, enabling advanced audience segmentation, modeling and targeting.

The company will have access to audience measurement data for TV programs and commercial content in broadcast syndication and across all seven of the Entertainment Studios’ HD cable television networks.

The number of persons age 2 and older in U.S. TV households is estimated to be 304.5 million, which represents a 0.9% increase from last year. Increases in U.S. Hispanic, black and Asian households were also seen, due to estimated increases in population growth and TV penetration.

T​his agreement provides ABC with out-of-home viewing data, including ratings for all content — programs and commercials — aired on the network for live plus seven days of time-shifted viewing. The service combines Nielsen’s PPM technology from nearly 77,000 installed panelists across 44 TV markets with Nielsen’s national representative panel.

Nielsen says three of the largest digital video platforms — Facebook, Hulu and YouTube — will now be included in its digital content ratings. That offers a broader view of media owners’ content.

Cable TV networks continue to see steeper overall viewership declines — particularly with younger TV viewers. In the second quarter, MoffettNathanson Research says there was a 9.1% decline in total day 18-49 viewers in Nielsen C3 ratings — the average commercial minute ratings plus three days of time-shifted viewing — for cable networks.

To dig into out-of-home (OOH) viewing, Nielsen analyzed data to see what content Americans are consuming beyond the comfort of their own couches. The analysis, which looked into total day out-of-home TV viewership from the beginning of 2017 to the end of May, uncovered a bevy of trends — some intuitive, and some surprising — that begin to scratch the surface of this new horizon in measured behavior.

The reports of TV’s death are greatly exaggerated, and some people have blamed the ratings messenger — Nielsen. The data put out by the audience measurement company for what it calls “linear viewing” — which counts number of people who watch a program the day it airs — has been on a steady decline across broadcast and many cable networks in recent years. The company says it has answered the call by networks and ad agencies to provide “total audience data” that includes viewing on Internet-connected TV sets, digital devices and on screens seen outside the home.

The development of Nielsen’s out-of-home ratings system is one of the most closely viewed happenings in sports TV this fall, particularly when the NFL kicks off. After a season that saw NFL ratings fall by close to 10%, the increases that come from out-of-home ratings could build momentum for NFL telecasts that saw their biggest TV ratings drop in years, network executives say.

A not-so-simple question has plagued the TV and advertising industries for years: What is the value of TV programming that is no longer being watched on TV? A partial answer has arrived. Nielsen said Tuesday it is now counting views of certain types of programming on Hulu’s live service and YouTube TV, which can then be used as currency in negotiations between TV networks and advertisers. The maneuver would place viewing from so-called “skinny bundles” of programming offered by subscription-video-on-demand players into the mix when Madison Avenue decides what types of content to support.

Nielsen says its syndicated VOD Content Ratings from nine networks — including Turner and Discovery Networks — will be included in Nielsen’s Media Impact, a tool media planners use to estimate audience reach, sales and brand equity before committing investment. The tool allows advertisers to reallocate their media mix.

Fox Sports has joined ESPN on the team of sports channels hoping to boost ratings by adding viewers at bars, restaurants, gyms, hotels and (yes) at work: Nielsen says today that Fox’s FS1, FS2 and Fox Deportes have signed a multiyear agreement to use Nielsen’s new National Out-of-Home Reporting Service.

Nielsen says its Digital Ad Ratings will now provide cross-device measurement of advertising audiences on YouTube across all computers and mobile devices.

The new agreement includes access to Nielsen currency data across all 210 local DMAs.

On the one side there’s comScore, the upstart ratings firm that’s making headway using data gleaned from cable and satellite set-top boxes. On the other is the longtime leader Nielsen, which has found it difficult to finally move on from paper diaries, but says that’s about to change. Nielsen execs promise that a new system will be in place by the fall and monthly ratings that stations can sell against will be available in the first half of next year.

A first-of-its kind analysis of TV audience data used by modelers to measure the return on investment for ad spending found that it is sorely lacking, and in some cases misrepresents TV’s ROI by as much as 20%. The findings, which were unveiled Monday during the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement Conference in Jersey City, N.J., are based on an exhaustive analysis conducted by Sequent Partners and Nielsen for the Council for Research Excellence

In a letter to advertisers, EVP Steve Marks says the mega-station group will use comScore exclusively for audience measurement starting in 2018.

Nielsen C3 ratings — a major measure for TV marketers — have showed high mid-single-digit declines for the just-completed TV season for the major four English-speaking TV networks.