Nielsen

The company says its Digital Ad Ratings measures nearly 90% of total digital video spend in the U.S.; more than 60% resiliency against the loss of third-party identifiers.

The industry group that represents major television networks is calling on the nonprofit Media Rating Council to strip Nielsen’s accreditation in an unprecedented escalation of a months-long feud centered on the accuracy of Nielsen ratings. On Wednesday morning, the Video Advertising Bureau, which counts A+E Networks, Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS (among others) as members, delivered a letter to the MRC demanding that it suspend its accreditation of Nielsen’s national ratings service due to the measurement firm’s handling of its in-home panel. That panel, which serves as the backbone of Nielsen’s television measurement products, has been cast into doubt since at least March 2020.

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 a virtual presentation today during the Cannes Lions brand confab, Nielsen shed a bit more light on streaming from its growing body of research on the U.S. market. Following up on its announcement last week of a new measurement tool called The Gauge, SVP of Product Strategy Brian Fuhrer explored the May viewing numbers during a 20-minute talk. Subscription video on demand services remain the dominant form of streaming, he said, with 52% of total streams. Ad-supported video on demand followed with 27% and MVPDs and virtual MVPDs (e.g., YouTube TV) account for 10% of all streaming.

Since the pandemic, many TV stations are facing measurement and under-delivery issues that they fear will only be compounded by Nielsen’s inclusion of BBO homes in October. While Nielsen is working to improve the sample, the uncertainty has some broadcasters turning to less Nielsen-reliant 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.

ABC, Fox, NBC, Univision split the win on weak night for Nielsens.

A new monthly Nielsen measurement called The Gauge shows just how much the pandemic has catalyzed streaming among a broad ranger of consumers with May usage across all television homes climbing to 26% of time spent on TV — outpacing broadcast, with an audience share of 25%. The streaming video data included SVOD and AVOD. Streaming and broadcast now account for half of television time. Cable accounted for 39%, and “other” viewing for 9%.

The company known for measuring television ratings said Netflix and YouTube are far ahead of their digital rivals, but viewers still spend more time watching cable and network TV.

Comscore, taking another swipe at ratings rival Nielsen, said its local-market data shows that during the pandemic, TV usage climbed starting last March, then decreased, but still finished the year higher than in 2019. Nielsen has been under fire for under-counting viewing with its panel-based data showing that TV usage was lower during the pandemic.

Nielsen’s local TV ratings understated viewing during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to preliminary findings of an internal analysis conducted by Nielsen. The analysis, which was conducted in response to requests from industry ratings watchdog the Media Rating Council, found the understatement ranged by market size, daypart and demographic group, but overall was found to be similar to an understatement previously disclosed by Nielsen for its national TV ratings estimates.

Nielsen Holdings PLC’s finance chief Linda Zukauckas is allocating funds to a new TV ratings platform after the $2.4 billion sale of the company’s market-analytics business earlier this year. The New York-based firm, which tracks consumer media habits in radio, video-streaming and traditional television, plans to increase its capital expenditures to improve the way it measures TV audiences, Zukauckas said. A large chunk of that money is budgeted for Nielsen One, a new product that will combine ratings from both streaming and live TV when it debuts next year.

The shift toward streaming deals and new competitors present a very real threat to its 70-year lead as the currency for TV buying.

Samsung — one of the largest purveyors of ACR (automatic content recognition) data derived from smart TVs used by that ad industry, if not the largest — is hedging its audience measurement bets by going with the industry’s tried-and-true measurement brand: Nielsen.

Like many media executives, Discovery CEO David Zaslav is not happy with Nielsen, which admitted Tuesday that it may have undercounted viewers during the pandemic. During a conversation Wednesday at MoffetNathanson’s annual media and communications summit, Zaslav blasted Nielsen’s “antiquated system of measurement,” arguing that its ratings were inaccurate even before this latest snafu.

The Media Rating Council says that Nielsen’s numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic undercounted viewers, as was alleged by networks and distributors represented by the VAB.
In a statement, MRC said it believes that total usage of television by persons 18-49 — the key demo used to sell advertising — was understated by approximately 2% to 6% for the February 2021 measurement period.

Networks and distributors represented by the VAB, after complaining that Nielsen under-reported TV usage during the pandemic, said that reported TV usage has turned up noticeably since Nielsen resumed at-home servicing of its sample homes.

Nielsen and the networks it serves have long been at odds, like a student might be with a particularly tough college professor who always offers a B- but never an A. But lately, tensions have begun to boil over into the public sphere, raising anew the prospect that advertisers and media outlets may start using a broader range of measurement services as the benchmark for advertising and sponsorship sales.

Nielsen said Friday it will not submit to an audit of its COVID-era ratings measurements, rejecting a request from TV networks who believe their ratings have been undercounted during the pandemic.

Scott Brown, the head of Nielsen’s audience measurement product, is leaving to join Experian. The move comes as Nielsen is grappling with a variety of new challenges, including charges from the TV industry that the quality of its ratings samples have deteriorated during the pandemic, because Nielsen technicians and reps have had a more difficult time gaining access to panelists’ homes.

CBS, ABC, NBC and other TV networks want the company that audits their audiences every day to submit to an audit of its own. The Video Advertising Bureau, an industry group that represents the TV networks to Madison Avenue, is demanding that Nielsen, the arbiter of TV ratings, submit to a third-party audit from Ernst & Young, the latest salvo in a battle between to the two sides over how TV audiences were counted during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Video Advertising Bureau accuses Nielsen of a “systematic undercounting” of TV program viewership since last March. Nielsen needs to respond to the accusation with more than a white paper.

The media industry’s go-to authority for measuring audiences acknowledged on Friday that the recent coronavirus pandemic bent its yardstick, but maintained nothing is broken. Nielsen, under fire from the TV networks that depend on it to count the audiences for which advertisers pay, says pandemic conditions resulted in a smaller panel of consumers it relies on to monitor TV viewing, but believes the trends it chronicles during 2020 remain viable.

The Video Advertising Bureau claims “systematic under-counting” as Nielsen lost 20% of its panelists it uses to measure TV usage during the pandemic.

Adults spent less time watching video during the third quarter of 2020, but spent a lot more time streaming connected TV, according to the latest Total Audience Report from Nielsen. Nielsen said that the average time spent per day with video fell to 5 hours and 21 second during the third quarter of 2020, compared to 5 hours and 22 second in 2019 and 5 hours and 24 second in 2919.

Citing “a renewed focus on measurement” in the wake of Google’s decision to abandon “identifier” tracking and ad targeting, a major equities research firm has upgraded Nielsen shares from a “market perform” to “outperform” — a Wall Street rating it hasn’t had in more than two years.

Roku’s deal for Nielsen’s advertising video business boosts the size of its potential market and makes it more valuable to programmers going directly after consumers, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets said Wednesday. Earlier this week, streaming platform Roku said it was buying Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising unit, which includes technology that makes it easier for advertisers to target specific audiences.

In a move that will bolster Roku’s advertising capabilities, the streaming company has acquired Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising unit. Terms for the deal were not disclosed. A person familiar with the transaction described it as “not material” to the overall business of Roku, whose market value is $53 billion. Nevertheless, the acquisition is a meaningful step forward for the streaming potentate. The company will now be able to serve viewers “dynamically inserted” ads on live, linear programming, opening up new horizons for its burgeoning ad business.

With the media business looking to make a transition away from digital device-laden cookies, Nielsen has upped its efforts around its own identity measures, introducing Identity Sync, a global attribution system. Nielsen says the platform is the industry’s first non-campaign-specific tag that does not depend on device IDs or browsers. One of its first clients to sign on under a pilot program is the Barceló Hotel Group.

This means that CBS is the only broadcast net among the so-called “Big 4” sticking with the earliest snapshot of how a show performed. That said, in recent seasons, CBS has also shifted its overall reliance to metrics that include delayed (mostly DVR) viewing. It just has not sworn off the “live” stuff — yet.

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp and Janet Stilson look at the divide that has opened up between agencies and station groups over Nielsen’s plan to include broadband-only homes in its local market samples starting this spring. Read more about the BBO homes debate here.

Steve Lanzano, TVB president-CEO, said Wednesday that Nielsen should delay its inclusion of broadband-only homes in its measurement “until the current sample is fixed.”

Nielsen’s introduction of broadband-only homes into local market samples this spring has drawn support from agencies and research firms eager to get a better measure of TV consumption in a growing world of cord cutters. Station groups want to slow down a transition they fear will bring ratings declines, among other concerns. 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.

As America waits and waits on the viewership verdict of Sunday’s big game, it appears as of Monday evening ET that there will be no ratings for the Super Bowl any time soon. Literally becoming the new definition of the phrase “You had one job,” the long-time data measurement company has nothing to report on the Buccaneers 31-9 win over former reigning NFL champs the Kansas City Chiefs on CBS Sunday. Fast affiliate ratings may be available early in the a.m. tomorrow.

Nielsen on Tuesday announced the launch of a new service measuring viewing to theatrical films released direct-to-consumers via streaming services. Speaking during a session at the CES conference, Nielsen executives said the new theatrical video-on-demand audience measurement service was launched in response to pandemic’s impact on studios accelerating direct-to-consumer streaming of new films, often launched in conjunction with or in lieu of cinema releases.