Nielsen has received accreditation for its Big Data + Panel National TV measurement from the Media Rating Council (MRC), per a press release, potentially re-entrenching the longtime force in TV measurement ahead of this year’s upfronts and NewFronts presentations.
The news is the latest evidence that the pendulum of measurement power is swinging back to Nielsen after several tumultuous years. Nielsen in September 2021 lost the MRC's seal of approval for its National TV Audience Measurement service, which it regained in 2023. In the interim period, several alternative measurement firms emerged as stronger competitors for the one-time monopoly force.
Then late last year, Nielsen received accreditation for its approach to integrating first-party livestreaming data into its national television panel rating services. The integration of livestream data has become increasingly crucial as TV viewing becomes more fragmented amid the rise of cord-cutting.
For the latest accreditation, the MRC completed and evaluated “rigorous audits” of Nielsen’s national service and components including its big data integration and first-party streaming of select NFL games, according to George Ivie, CEO and executive director of the MRC. The move makes Nielsen the first national measurement provider to be accredited for such a hybrid offering.
“No one else pairs a high quality, representative panel with a data set this large,” said Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao in a statement.
Scale for upfronts
Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel National TV measurement brings together the firm’s historic panel measurement approach with data from cable, satellite set-top boxes and smart TVs from across 45 million households and 75 million devices. The offering was widely adopted by many broadcasters and agencies during last year’s upfront season, per Nielsen, and the company is endorsing it as a currency for this year’s upfronts.
Advertisers broadly approve of Nielsen's decision to incorporate first-party data from streamers, according to Advertiser Perceptions research. The firm’s dual methodology, which pairs a calibration panel and a large data set, addresses historical concerns about its limited panel size, according to Erin Firneno, senior vice president of business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions.
“The Media Rating Council's accreditation of Nielsen's Big Data + Panel TV Measurement will boost adoption of this new measurement tool, which has been widely anticipated by advertisers,” Firneno said via email. “The announcement's timing will also benefit Nielsen, [as] advertisers have a few months to test and learn before the upfronts. Overall, I think this puts Nielsen in a solid position for heading into the upfronts.”
Football and the future
While the move to a multi-currency landscape in the TV ad market is happening, Nielsen continues to make moves that strengthen its position, even before this latest accreditation. Netflix last year partnered with Nielsen to measure live ratings of its Christmas Day NFL games, while the firm has measured Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” viewership since 2022.
“The NFL continues to support Nielsen's efforts to modernize measurement so we can all benefit from accurate insights in an increasingly fragmented media marketplace,” said Paul Ballew, chief data and analytics officer of the NFL, in a statement.
The addition of big data to Nielsen’s panel-based measurement is positioned as a best-of-both-worlds approach to enable cross-platform measurement at scale, allowing advertisers to better plan and buy ads and other players to make better-informed deals about content programming, licensing and distribution.
“Big data has become the cornerstone for modern media measurement and currency. As the multi-screen TV landscape continues to rapidly evolve, the VAB commends all currency providers who are investing in the necessary data sets and the MRC for its rigorous audits to ensure more accurate and complete insights,” said Kailyn Hartmann, vice president of advanced analytics and intelligence at Video Advertising Bureau, in an emailed comment.
Along with accreditation, Nielsen has expanded its measurement of out-of-home TV viewing and developed products like Streaming Content Ratings and Streaming Platform Ratings. It has also added outcome capabilities to its Nielsen One platform to give advertisers more cross-platform measurement data. The company plans to submit Nielsen One to the MRC for audit and evaluation in the future, per the press release.
