Nielsen

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.

Nielsen reported higher second quarter earnings and said its new ratings system would roll out on schedule as it looks to complete being acquired by a private equity group. Net income rose to $111 million, or 31 cents a share, compared to $76 million, or 21 cents a share a year ago. Revenue rose 2.4% to $822 million.

American television viewers spent more than a third of their time with streaming platforms in June, an all-time high. Nielsen’s monthly platform rankings show streaming taking up 33.7% of viewing time for the month, up from 31.9% in May and the highest mark since the measurement company began its monthly “Gauge” report in May 2021.

The measurement firm says media buyers can now compare YouTube reach from computer, mobile and CTV to linear TV, a “foundational step” toward achieving Nielsen ONE.

The GOP commissioner says if deep ties to single-source data are an impediment, they should be severed.

Continuing dissatisfaction with and distrust in Nielsen is leading stations, agencies and brands to seek measurement alternatives. 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 and agencies have cited a lack of Mediaocean integration as a barrier for new currencies, but VideoAmp and Comscore now have cleared it, and iSpot.tv could be next.

The media agency announced today it will test Comscore’s local TV measurement for the 2023 media buying and planning period.

The FCC is gearing up to find another way to determine a TV station’s local market for must-carry and other purposes. The move comes after decades of using Nielsen’s TV Station Index directory as its local market regulatory bible of sorts. That is because Nielsen has phased out the report, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel pointed out in outlining the agenda for the commission’s July public meeting.

In the middle of an upfront in which measurement is a key issue, one of the biggest media buyers in the world is making its position clear on what it will use for currency in 2022-23 and how it is preparing for the future. GroupM said it will continue to transact using Nielsen data for the upfronts. But it also said it will be using alternative currencies, including outcome-based approaches, with a dozen of its largest clients to shadow its Nielsen-based deals.

The new Distribution Dynamics and Program Availability Archive illuminate characteristics of content to enable data-driven decisions.

Nielsen has expanded its Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) service to include a simpler version of reporting on connected TVperson-level audiences across all smart TV manufacturers and streaming providers.

Nielsen ranks Anatomy of a Scandal No. 4 for the week of April 18-24 after Netflix declared it “No. 1 in the U.S.”

The Nielsen Gauge report for April 2022, published Thursday, revealed that audiences spent on average more than 30% of their total TV viewing time this past month consuming watching streaming video content. That is a record share for streaming, and up from the previous record of 29.7% that was set in March. Overall TV viewing dropped by 2.1% from March, while consumption of streaming content in April was almost identical to March, helping to increase streaming’s share of overall TV viewing by over 0.6%.

How did the simple act of counting TV viewers become so controversial? David Kenny thinks he knows. The CEO of Nielsen has been under fire for months, ever since some of his company’s biggest customers — the nation’s TV networks — began to complain about how Nielsen tabulated viewers during the coronavirus pandemic. They are still complaining. And Nielsen faces a host of upstart rivals with whom the networks are striking new measurement deals. But Kenny says he isn’t letting their maneuvering get in the way of Nielsen’s future.

Nielsen, which has agreed to be acquired by a private-equity group led by Elliott Investment Management, said that its go-shop period has expired without an alternative proposal to buy the company emerging.

Three important ad trade bodies – the Association of National Advertisers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and the Advertising Research Foundation’s Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) – Thursday said they are fielding a new study to “explore the industry’s transition to a multi-currency TV market in the U.S.” The study comes as a perfect storm of developments have led up to a Babel-like 2022-23 upfront marketplace, in which a variety of “alternate” currencies are being promoted alongside the industry’s legacy currency — Nielsen — and not one of them currently is accredited by industry self-regulatory body, the Media Rating Council.

Measurement giants faced off at the NewFronts Thursday, as Nielsen alternatives pitched a next generation in TV and video currency, while Nielsen contended you can’t really trust numbers from its rivals’ big data sets.

Measurement of Tubi will expand coverage of streaming devices, including computer, mobile and connected TV inventory served on specific CTV devices.

Nielsen today reported lower earnings as it prepares to be acquired by a private equity group lead by Elliott Investment Management. Net income fell to $105 million, or 29 cents a share, compared to $573 million, or $1.60 a share, reflecting the sale of its Global Connect business for $2.7 billion last year. The company said net income from continuing operations was $101 million, down from $106 million. Revenue rose 1.6% to $877 million.

The measurement company will use Inscape ACR data from approximately 20 million Vizio TVs, obtains first window of exclusivity to Vizio’s newly expanded local station coverage.

The Media Rating Council will reaccredit Nielsen’s national TV ratings service “soon,” and it will fast-track its new digital ratings methodology, with a vote on reaccrediting it within the next few weeks, BMO Capital Markets analyst Daniel Salmon asserted in a note sent to investors Sunday.

With cord-cutting continuing, the number of U.S. homes that get content over-the-air through an antenna has grown to 18.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, up from 18.4 million a year ago, according to a new report from Nielsen. Those 19 million homes represent 15.3% of households, up from 14.3% in the fourth quarter of 2018, when there are 16.7 million over the air homes and just 10% in 2010.

As the industry continues to try to solve the increasingly complicated measurement problem, YouTube and Nielsen have partnered to add co-viewing metrics to account for multiple viewers watching YouTube TV and YouTube on connected TV.

Beyond Will Smith’s infamous pimp-slap of Chris Rock, the other big news in Hollywood has been the free-for-all assault on Nielsen by networks and advertisers. In the otherwise staid and arcane world of audience measurement, the campaign to replace the Nielsen system with different methodologies has garnered unprecedented press and grown to undeniable proportions. So much so that Nielsen, itself, recently agreed to a $16 billion acquisition by a group of private equity investors who are betting big on the company and the media measurement space.

WindAcre Partners, which expressed its opposition to Nielsen’s plan to be acquired by a group of private equity firms for $16 billion including debt, said it raised its stake in the ratings company to 18.9%. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday, WindAcre bought 33.4 million Nielsen shares on April 6, 7 and 8 at prices between $27.05 a share and $27.71 a share, for a total of about $918 million. That brought WindAcre’s investment in Nielsen to more than $1.6 billion.

Americans increased the time they spent streaming by 18% in February to 169.4 billion minutes from a year ago, according to Nielsen. In its new State of Play report, Nielsen sees streaming continuing to grow. It found that 93% of Americans said they will increase their paid streaming services or make no changes to their current subscription portfolio over the next year. The number of Americans paying for more than four streaming services grew to 18% from 7% in 2019.

Nielsen CEO David Kenny’s total compensation for 2021 was $13.8 million, up 29% from the previous year, according to Nielsen’s proxy statement, released Tuesday. Kenny took a pay cut in 2020, a year in which the COVID-19 pandemic affected most businesses. Kenny received $12.9 million in compensation during 2019.