Nielsen

Nielsen posted weaker-than-expected quarterly business due to lower revenues from its retail/marketing services business — and that hurts its stock price in a big way early on.

Weeks after unveiling a plan to introduce out-of-home measurement of television viewing in local TV markets, Nielsen today announced a plan to also introduce a “national” out-of-home TV measurement service, but it didn’t indicate whether and how it would actually be nationally representative. It said that viewing will be “based on data from over 75,000 [portable people meter] panelists across 44 local markets.”

According to the second quarter Nielsen Total Audience Report, which focuses on what options consumers have in addition to how they use them, behaviors and usage are unique to the device being used. Consumers still spend most of their time on traditional platforms, but they also look to explore the wide range of content channels made available by new media.

Both Nielsen and ComScore have identified local TV measurement as a growth area ripe with opportunity. And according to CBS research guru David Poltrack, “You now have two companies … that are expanding and investing a lot of money in measuring the medium more effectively. We’ve never enjoyed that before.”

Its local TV service will incorporate portable people meters to enhance total audience coverage for both in-home and out-of-home viewing.

The new metric, part of Nielsen’s total audience measurement, measures audiences across desktop and mobile for all content including audio, text and video. BuzzFeed, Vice, Mashable, PopSugar, Discovery, Freeform, Kik, AOL, A&E and Tastemade are all on board for the Friday debut.

Even with more outlets and devices competing for audiences’ attention, viewers aren’t moving away from live TV as much as they did a year ago, according to Nielsen’s second-quarter 2016 Total Audience Report released today. The report found that live TV declines are starting to level off. In the second quarter of this year, adults spent an average of four hours, nine minutes watching live TV, which is down two minutes from the same period a year ago. But there was an eight-minute decrease from 2Q 2014 to 2Q 2015.

The hyper-fragmentation of consumer choice across all screens is reducing the share of choices they make to watch a TV channel. That’s among the top findings coming out of the latest edition of Nielsen’s Total Audience Report. The report, which was released to clients Thursday, is the first to publish shares of channels received and viewed by the average American household in a while, and it shows the average number viewed has fallen to less than 10% of the channels they receive.

Nielsen announced plans last week to replace its paper ratings diaries with a system based on data from cable and satellite set-top boxes. However, many broadcasters still aren’t sure how it’s going to work. “They haven’t really told us that much about their plan going forward,” said Raycom’s Billy McDowell. Added Cordillera’s Terry Hurley: “I’m hopeful, but skeptical.”

Distracted viewing is a topic of fervent discussion among media people, who worry over whether their clients’ ads are being seen by viewers who are texting on their phones, checking Facebook on their tablets, and live-tweeting shows, all while simultaneously watching television. A study commissioned by the Council for Research Excellence finds second screens are a significant source of distraction. Howard Shimmel, chair of the CRE’s Neurometrics Committee, talks about what prompted the study, whether buyers should be concerned about the accuracy of ratings, and what the next phase of the study will bring.

Almost a year after taking the wraps off its multiplatform total audience measurement tool, Nielsen said it has set a release schedule and will complete the rollout of its total content ratings, or TCR, by March 1.

The official retirement of paper diaries is slated for early 2018. The new electronic local audience measurement system “will incorporate return path data from set-top boxes, and other electronic measurement in local services,” Nielsen says.

Of Nielsen’s 210 Designated Market Areas, 47 increased their positions, while an equal number dropped in the new 2016-17 rankings. There were three changes in the top 10 markets, with Houston moving up two spots to No. 8, knocking Boston and Atlanta down one place each to 9 and 10, respectively. Of all the moves, the largest was Reno’s six-spot drop to 112, with Des Moines, Iowa, the biggest gainer, rising three slots to 69.

A Nielsen case study commissioned by Google found that TV reach seems to drive YouTube engagement, and in turn, YouTube engagement drives TV reach. In other words, according to the report, people who view a TV program’s content on YouTube are more likely to tune in to the actual show. Because of that, as TV audience increases, so does YouTube viewership.

The number of persons age 2 and older in U.S. TV households is estimated to be 301.7 million, which represents an increase of 1.6% from last year. Nielsen said the 2017 estimates reflect real changes in population since last year and updated TV penetration levels, differentially calculated for qualifying market break and age/sex demographic categories.

With all eyes peeled toward financial questions surrounding one of the largest media researchers — comScore — another biggie, Germany’s GfK, reportedly has put itself on the block.

The group owner will continue to have the ratings service’s various tools at its five TV stations.

According to MoffettNathanson Research, broadcast networks’ Nielsen C3 ratings were off 7% for the month to 4.6 million 18-49 viewers — worse than the recent months — but actually better than earlier in the year when they lost in January (11%), February (12%), March (13%), and April (13%). A year ago in July, broadcast networks were down 4% among 18-49 viewers.After some pretty decent viewership metrics for cable TV networks in 2016, July’s numbers sank sharply. Cable TV networks were also down 7% in 18-49 viewers to 15.7 million.

As the media world changes the patterns and tendencies of consumers everywhere, Nielsen says it’s finding more and more examples of why it’s important to judge each platform by the three basic cross-platform tenets: how many people use each platform, how often do they do so and how long do they stay.

YouTube original content head Susanne Daniels pushed back Friday against the insistence by television executives that uniform systems to measure multiplatform video viewing are needed — and the movement by companies such as Nielsen and comScore to create such systems.

According to Nielsen’s first-quarter 2016 comparable metrics report, TV is still the preferred choice for overall viewing, and is the most heavily consumed platform among adults of all ages. TV continues to play a role in shaping our experiences of live historical events, as consumers continue to watch television as they watch history unfold. In fact, Live+DVR/time-shifted TV viewing accounts for 47% of the total average audience among adults 18+.

You still love television. You use your tablet more than ever. And now you are as likely to have paid services like Netflix or Amazon Prime as you are to have a DVR service. Those are some of the findings of a study released this week by Nielsen that measured how we are consuming media (increasingly on devices we hold in our hands), and how much live TV we still watch (an average of more than five hours a day).

Nielsen research shows that viewing on a conventional TV set continues to trump viewing on computers, smartphones and tablets in terms of ad attentiveness and recall, as well as their overall enjoyment of the programming and advertising they watch.

Netflix and its competitors have long kept ratings for their shows closely guarded. Nielsen has now shed some light on them. According to the measurement service, 6.7 million people watched the show’s season-four premiere from June 17, when it debuted on the service, through June 19. Over the same period, 5.9 million people watched the season’s second episode.

That’s just one of the findings of Nielsen’s Q1 2016 Total Audience Report. This year’s version also found U.S. adults spent 10 hours, 39 minutes a day consuming media in this year’s first quarter. That’s up an hour from a year ago, and it’s a result of a substantial increase in smartphone and tablet usage. But it’s a different story among millennials. Live plus time-shifted TV has remained relatively stable.

Nielsen has a new service it hopes to sell it to advertising agencies and networks that now rely on intuition and general surveys measuring a celebrity’s popularity when they choose someone for a role or advertising campaign. Nielsen says it can now weigh specific consumer attitudes and tendencies to suggest ideas the experts may not have thought about.

With nearly a billion Tweets sent in the U.S. about TV during the 2015-2016 season, social media continues to play a starring role in fans’ living rooms. With online response to linear TV peaking as programs air live, networks, agencies and advertisers pay close attention to highly engaging moments and look to capitalize on social programs as opportunities for advertisers to drive earned media. Nielsen looks back to highlight the top series, specials and sports events on Twitter in the U.S. from Aug. 31, 2015, through May 29, 2016.

NBCUniversal took shots at digital media and, only a little more subtly, at Nielsen in an uprfront presentation to promote all of its cable and digital properites in addition to the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks.

Katz Broadcasting’s Escape multicast network is branching into original programming with a brace of true-crime series and has acquired two other similarly themed programs. The company also has a deal with Nielsen for Escape and its sibling diginet Grit to be rated C3 nationally.

The race is on for seamless, de-duplicated cross platform measurement. Nielsen recently shared results some initial data findings from its Total Audience solution.

As Nielsen pushes its “total audience” measurement system as the new currency for a hybrid TV and video advertising marketplace, some fundamental issues remain — especially the fact that Nielsen will effectively be adding many more sources of video viewing to the measured universe, and consequently, will fragment the TV/video advertising marketplace beyond anything Madison Avenue has experienced to date.

Reality-competition shows get the most “live” viewing, while animated shows get the least of any genre of primetime programming, according to Nielsen research unveiled Tuesday. The research is part of a company effort to better assess the “total” audiences for individual TV shows beyond their seven-day time frame.

Univision becomes the first Spanish-language channel to sign up for Nielsen’s new National and Local TV Digital Measurement services. It’s no coincidence it comes as the upfront nears.

The latest estimates from Nielsen (its May 2016 results) show a 3.2% year-over-year decline in cable TV homes and 2.2% in median decline in all pay TV homes (cable, satellite and telco).

The station group is opting to use ComScore data in 28 smaller markets where Nielsen’s paper diaries have long been the ratings currency. “We decided not to go forward in diary markets, as even Nielsen will tell you the diary is not adequate in today’s media environment,” Raycom research exec Billy McDowell says, adding: “We still subscribe [to Nielsen] in LPM [local people meter] and set-meter markets along with the new code reader markets.”

Nielsen Holdings had a strong first-quarter financial period. Overall Nielsen revenue climbed 2% to $1.49 billion, with net income 60% higher to $101 million.

With the convenience and personalized benefits offered by on-demand program viewing, it’s no surprise that VOD is fast becoming a part of daily viewing habits for many around the world, regardless of age. In fact, among the 65% of global respondents who watch any type of VOD programming — which can include long- and short-form content — more than four-in-10 say they watch at least once a day (43%).