Nielsen continues to work for everyone in this year’s upfront.
Late last year, I laid out our commitment to delivering measurement that is reliable, accurate, unbiased, and inclusive.
We articulated our principles to create a better measurement future, and have heard from many of you that these are the right principles and that we must be accountable for meeting them.
I wanted to give you an update on where Nielsen is in our efforts to improve measurement, and assure you that we will continue to provide the most accurate and verifiable currency in the market to guarantee this year’s video upfront commitments.
We have made significant progress against each of these principles.
- Ensure inclusion and representation of all audiences.
One of the essential reasons to maintain investment in a robust panel is to ensure big data is validated and fully inclusive and representative of the country's changing demographics. By representing real humans and validating our massive big data sets with real-world viewing behavior of over 100,000 people, we’re able to represent all audiences, including harder-to-measure diverse communities that are often under-represented with big data alone. To ensure we’re continually delivering equitable measurement and promoting inclusion, we’ve created – and take direct guidance from – three External Advisory Committees, comprising business and community experts and leaders who represent the African-American, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian Pacific-American communities. In addition, we work closely with the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) to ensure we’re doing everything possible to promote a more equitable and inclusive industry.
- Enable true comparability across all platforms and deduplicate audiences.
As consumer behavior and media habits continue to rapidly change, the need for a single, cross-platform measurement currency that deduplicates audiences becomes more clear every day. Nielsen ONE reconciles our measurements to finally provide the industry with deduplicated reach and frequency metrics across linear programming, streaming, connected TV, and digital channels. In January of this year, we launched the Alpha of Nielsen ONE. We will continue to add new cross-media capabilities in the coming months, with a full launch in the 4th quarter of this year. As always, we will maintain parallel data so you can continue to use historic benchmarks in your planning and analysis tools.
- Utilize the most advanced data science.
To better serve you, we are utilizing the most advanced data and research methodologies, including big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. We also need to build entirely new and forward-looking forms of measurement. To do that successfully, we have over 500 of the world’s leading data scientists working on new big data approaches, and we are collaborating with the data science teams at leading platforms, networks, and agencies. Through our use of big datasets, we are able to combine millions of data points from direct publisher integrations, strategic partnerships and identity providers to resolve identity across all platforms and devices. Our panel also plays an unique and critical role. Nielsen remains the only company that can accurately validate identity against real consumer behavior thanks to our people-based panels. This combination allows for the most accurate person-level measurement across all platforms and devices. We also released parallel data for National TV measurement inclusive of our panels and big data from approximately 30 million households across DIRECTV, DISH, Roku and VIZIO. Our VIZIO relationship provides exclusive data for 400 local stations, where it is important to capture audiences who use antennas instead of cable boxes for broadcast networks. We also integrated broadband-only (BBO) homes into Nielsen’s local measurement metrics in January 2022 to ensure the growing population of streaming-only households is fully represented in our people-based panel.
- Meet measurement accreditation standards.
We believe adherence to rigorous measurement standards that reflect current audience realities and platform capabilities is critical for any measurement company. At Nielsen, our work with the Media Rating Council (MRC) is central to delivering on that. The MRC recently clarified that Nielsen is one of only two companies in the TV accreditation process, and that Nielsen is the only provider who has been consistently and fully audited over recent years. In the past several months, we have been working transparently with the MRC staff and member committees, taking their feedback on how to improve and sustain our services today and in the future. We continue to work toward accreditation of digital and linear measurement in 2022.
- Deliver wholly unbiased results.
For a thriving media ecosystem that works for all parties, the primary measurement cannot come from self-interested parties who are measuring themselves. History has shown that it doesn’t work. That said, we respect and learn from many groups across the industry who have formed committees on the subject of measurement. These include American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), among others. Given that most of these associations are also MRC members, we will continue sharing our methodology through the MRC in a well-established, discrete, and transparent process. We are, of course, always looking for constructive feedback in all forums, while respecting the MRC process. This approach allows us to learn from different perspectives, while adhering to the principle of wholly unbiased results.
As the industry’s measurement currency of choice, we want to ensure you can plan and transact with confidence today and into the future. Our principles are clear, and we are executing on them.
Thank you again for all the trust you put in us and please know that we are working everyday to build a better measurement future for everyone.
Regards,
David Kenny
Chief Executive Officer
Nielsen |
