Nielsen said it has integrated streaming data from connected television sets into Nielsen Media Impact, its media planning and optimization tool.
The streaming data comes from Nielsen’s Streaming Platform Ratings product, which uses people-powered panels and proprietary metering technology to measure what content is streamed, the device used to stream and the streaming source application.
Nielsen said adding streaming data will help advertisers with cross-platform campaigns identify incremental reach of streaming apps and reach consumers regardless of device.
“Nielsen is committed to helping the industry make data-informed decisions about their media plans that maximize efficiency and drive results,” said Jay Nielsen, senior VP, planning products at Nielsen. “With streaming data from the TV glass now available directly in our media planning tool, clients can more easily reach advanced audiences and navigate the fast changing landscape with the confidence that they’re spending every dollar as effectively as possible.”
Nielsen has been criticized for sticking with its panel-based system designed for a three-network work in a streaming era while newer competitors use big data to capture the myriad ways television is now being consumed. Many media companies are working with newer measurement companies to create currencies for buying and selling commercials, a function Nielsen has dominated for decades.
The VAB, which helped reveal that Nielsen was undercounting viewers during the pandemic because of problems with its vaunted panel of Nielsen homes, also expressed objections to how Nielsen is collecting data on streaming.
Also: Nielsen Out-of-Home Error Was a Big Deal: VAB
“Nielsen enters an already-crowded cross-platform TV measurement and currency provider arena with a distinct disadvantage versus the rocketing census-level cross-platform competitors; their Streaming Meter is another bolt-on to an already overstressed national panel that’s proving ever-more inadequate to measuring the expanding multiplicity of viewer options for TV content and ads,” said VAB CEO Sean Cunningham.
“The 2022 scale for confidence in cross-platform TV measurement and currency begins with a base in the tens-of-millions and requires transparency and fluid disclosures,” Cunningham said. “By contrast, a streaming sub-set that is a fractional portion of a legacy panel base in the tens-of-thousands with very little transparency or disclosures is always going to result in considerably lower cross-platform truth set confidence by all constituencies in the TV ad marketplace.”■
