Nielsen

Nielsen said its local ratings service is now not accredited because the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted its ability to manage the panels it uses to measure what viewers are watching. The Media Rating Council accreditation of Nielsen’s local people meter and set meter service in large- and mid-sized markets has been put on “hiatus” while the company develops new ways to recruit and maintain its panels. Nielsen’s system for measuring viewership in the smallest markets is not MRC accredited.

The new deal provides measurement of digital linear audiences across all Tegna markets.

Netflix shows drive the most viewership — comprising 93% of weekly top 10 lists since Aug. 3 — but the binge release model has its limits.

The ambitious “single currency” audience measurement plan unveiled by Nielsen this week comes with a price tag. And it will be paid mainly by charging higher prices to existing advertiser, agency and media customers, according to Wall Street analysts briefed by the company.

As streaming transforms the media landscape, Nielsen is making sweeping changes in the way it measures the viewing of programs and commercials, altering the way $100 billion in video advertising is bought and sold. Nielsen One will measure across linear, digital and streaming platforms, combine big data with its famous panel of Nielsen households, shift the focus from average minute per program to evaluating viewing on a second by second basis and move from a unit-based ad model to an impression based system that gives a separate audience number to individual commercials.

A study by Nielsen found that women and people of color are underrepresented on television relative to their share of the overall population. The study by the ratings service looked at not just how many people from various identity groups are cast on TV series, but how often and how long they appear.

After eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic, daytime TV viewing has become a “second primetime,” according to Nielsen, due to the continuing growth of kids viewing and at-home workers’ TV and internet consumption.

Former Wells Fargo marketing executive Jamie Moldafsky has been named chief marketing and communications officer of Nielsen Holdings. Moldafsky will be responsible for all marketing, including global brand strategy and management, product marketing, media, research and analytics, meetings, events and sponsorships and reputation.

The total minutes watched metric puts traditional shows on a much more equal footing.

Nielsen is telling clients it is going to start measuring how many people watch TV commercials in a new way, a move that will mean big changes in the way $70 billion in national TV advertising is bought and sold.

Nielsen Holdings has completed an anticipated deal to spin off its Nielsen Global Connect unit for $2.7 billion to Advent International, a private equity company, in partnership with former chief executive officer of TransUnion James Peck.

Content with a focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest has driven a 23% increase in national and local TV news consumption in September versus the same month a year ago, says Nielsen — down from the near 50% increase in the second quarter. Weekly time spent watching TV news content rose to 7 hours/5 minutes in September 2020 versus 5 hours/46 minutes in September 2019.

While the time consumers spend watching TV news has been rising since the fall of last year, it peaked at just under nine-and-a-half hours each week in April of this year — the height of the stay-at-home period in the U.S. Fast-forward to September, American adults are still engaged with news, watching an average of 7 hours and 5 minutes of TV news per week, which is up 23% from the same period last year.

The technology comes amid industry fears that Nielsen’s fingerprint-based Dynamic Advertising Insertion technology, debuting in new TVs this quarter, will insert ads or measure content on Netflix, Hulu and others without permission.

The growth of video streaming of all types is now an impetus for Nielsen to add new measurement for YouTube and YouTube TV when it comes to the video-site advertising inventory on connected TV platforms. YouTube’s streaming TV inventory will be measured in Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings and Total Ad Ratings.

Nielsen is launching Compass, a global database designed to establish syndicated standards and shared definitions for campaign outcomes measurement across platforms and regions. The campaign elements in the aggregated dataset — updated annually with about 25,000 campaign ROIs across 100 categories and 50 countries — include brands, pricing, promotions and media platforms.

Nielsen has shut down its 12-year-old place-based video networks measurement service. The move comes as many place-based media venues have been challenged by shutdowns or sparse attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Umbrella Academy was the runaway top title on Netflix in its first full week of release, according to figures from Nielsen. The ratings data provider is launching a weekly streaming top 10 list, with the first set of data covering the week of Aug. 3-9. For now, Nielsen measures only programs on Netflix and Amazon, with other streaming providers to be added in the future.

The number of persons age 2 and older in U.S. TV households is estimated to be 307.9 million, which represents a 0.2% increase from last year. Increases in U.S. Hispanic (+1.9%), Black (+0.9%) and Asian (+2.7%) TV households were also seen, due to estimated increases in population growth.

Streaming grew to more than 25% of total TV minutes viewed in the second quarter, according to Nielsen’s latest Total Audience Report. In Nielsen’s last report, streaming represented 19% of TV usage in the fourth quarter. At the same time, live TV consumption dropped to 3 hours and 43 minutes per day in the first quarter, down from 3:53 a year ago and 4:10 two years ago.

Nielsen swung to a loss in the second quarter as revenue fell amid pandemic as the company continued preparation to split into separate entities. Nielsen had a net loss of $30 million, or 8 cents a share, in the second quarter, compared to net income of $123 million, or 23 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue fell 8.1% to $1.496 billion.

Nielsen is changing its methodology for its digital measurement products — including Digital Content Ratings, Total Content Ratings, Digital in TV Ratings, Digital Ad Ratings and Total Ad Ratings. In part, it’s due to growing privacy consumer issues and continued pull back of third-party cookies.

Late on Friday, after facing criticism and a backlash this week from its TV network clients, Nielsen decided to reverse a decision it had made with regard to out-of-home viewing: It will go ahead with a plan to integrate viewing from the likes of restaurants, bars and other locations into its national TV viewing metric starting this fall.

“Nielsen’s abrupt delay of the long-planned integration of [out of home] viewing into the national TV currency less than two months before it was scheduled to be implemented is unacceptable and unjustifiable,” ViacomCBS said in a statement. “ViacomCBS — along with our peers and the Video Advertising Bureau — is calling on Nielsen to reverse its decision.”

TV network execs reacted with anger over Nielsen’s decision to delay the introduction of its planned out-of-home (OOH) measurement. Nielsen execs spent Wednesday afternoon calling media companies with the news that the new ratings measurement would not debut in September, as expected. The measurement company did not give a revised start date, telling one network that it could be ready by January. In its conversations with network execs, Nielsen cited the pandemic as a main reason for the delay.

Nielsen announced a new plan to cut costs and create operational efficiencies that will result in the reduction of its global workforce by about 3,500 employees. The company expects that plan to generate savings of about $250 million annually after taking a 2020 pre-tax restructuring charge of about $150 million to $170 million dollars. Nielsen had estimated that the charges would total between $120 million and $140 million.

Accreditation extends to NPM and all LPM markets, plus 19 set meter markets leveraging PPM data and Viewer Assignment methodology.

Nielsen is telling the FCC that it remains the best way to determine if a TV station is getting significant out-of-market viewership. A determination that a station is “significantly viewed” in an adjacent market allows an MVPD serving that market to carry the station, even if it duplicates in-market syndicated or network programming. That importation is otherwise prohibited by the network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rules.

A new Nielsen analysis indicates that spot advertising in local markets appears to be starting to turn the corner after declining in some areas by as much as 35% at the end of March.

TV ratings have soared amid coronavirus quarantines, but those same quarantines are making it harder for Nielsen to maintain the 45,000-household panel behind those ratings. It raises questions about how long Nielsen ratings can keep the accreditation from the Media Rating Council that lets them serve as currency in most TV deals, but it’s also accelerating long-contemplated improvements in how Nielsen measures TV viewing.

Univision Communications has joined Nielsen’s beta program for its addressable TV platform. Nielsen began testing its addressable platform last year, and announced the participation of seven broadcast companies in January: A+E Networks, AMC Networks, CBS, Discovery, Fox, NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia.

With most governments officially shutting down in mid-March due to the novel coronavirus, Nielsen analyzed TV data across the top 25 markets following the statewide orders, and compared with total TV usage from an equivalent period last year. By far, increases in viewing among kids 6-11 and teens 12-17 blew past the rest, particularly during daytime hours. Year-over-year percent increases for these demographics dwarfed those of all other age groups, hitting over 300% gains at noon.

Tweets about television are up in nearly every category from March 1 through April 15 compared with the same time last year, largely driven by the coronavirus pandemic, Nielsen found in a study, but one category stands out as a glaring exception: sports.

With people home-bound to slow the spread of the coronavirus, streaming has shown some pretty big increases in local markets, according to Nielsen. Comparing the week of March 23 to the week of March 2, connected device usage by 25 to 54 years old rose 95% in Portland, Ore.; 86% in Chicago; 78% in Denver, 74% in New York and 72% in St. Louis. In terms of connected device streaming ratings, the top markets include Orlando, Buffalo, Milwaukee and Norfolk.

CF Entertainment, The Weather Channel’s owner, is suing Nielsen over its $475,000 monthly ratings fee, citing breach of contract, unfair competition and unjust enrichment.