CBS OTT Gets Nielsen Digital Certification

CBS All Access, the company’s digital subscription video-on-demand and live streaming service, is the first app and browser experience to be certified for Nielsen’s Digital in TV Ratings measurement. CBS’s ongoing participation with Nielsen for digital measurement expands the companies’ relationship and is a component of Nielsen’s Total Audience Measurement, where all video content and advertising can be consistently measured with ratings.

CBS said it is the first broadcast network to include digital audience measurement in its television ratings by incorporating Nielsen’s SDK metering technology into CBS All Access within the network’s mobile apps and online video player.

CBS All Access’s Nielsen Digital in TV certification measures viewership of the service’s live offering of local CBS Television stations — available in more than 95 U.S. markets — across Android and iOS systems as well as desktops and laptops. This is in addition to the existing measurement of current season’s on-demand content through other measurement products and Nielsen Television Index’s measurement of connected TV viewing.

“CBS’s world-class content is being consumed across multiple platforms and devices,” said Marc DeBevoise, EVP-GM of CBS Digital Media. “From day one, we made it a priority for CBS All Access to provide the most sophisticated measurement capabilities and have been working closely with Nielsen to implement Digital in TV Ratings. We look forward to working closely with Nielsen to further expand measurement across even more platforms in the near future.”

Nielsen’s Total Audience framework enables clients to monetize digital audiences through both linear and dynamic ad models. Nielsen’s approach leverages the Nielsen TV panel along with census-based measurement. With Digital in TV Ratings, Nielsen will report audiences for ratings-qualified content consumed across both computer and mobile devices and add this viewing into the current existing C3/C7/average quarter hour TV ratings services.

“Nielsen’s mobile and computer ratings reinforce our commitment to provide comprehensive total audience measurement, measuring audiences anywhere and on any platform they are using to watch content,” said Peter Bradbury, managing director national client service, Nielsen. “We are very excited about the advancements we’ve made in TV audience ratings by including digital in order to understand viewing beyond traditional television, and we will continue to work very closely with CBS as they expand their digital measurement strategy.”