Nielsen said it is expanding the panel it uses to measure out-of-home TV viewing, which will mean bigger ratings for sports programming.
Nielsen currently has portable people meters that viewers wear in 50 of the biggest markets, representing 65% of the country.
After the expansion it will have meter-wearing panelists in every state except Alaska and Hawaii.
Expanding to 100% coverage of the continental U.S. will result in an increase in OOH contribution to the national data, a Nielsen spokesman said.
Nielsen began capturing viewing in locations such as airports, hotels, bard and restaurants about 10 years ago. It started including those viewers in its national ratings in 2020.
Also Read: In New Error, Nielsen Admits It Left Out Some Out-of-Home Viewing
According to Nielsen, in 2023 fans in the U.S. spent more than 1.7 trillion minutes watching games from the five most-watched sports leagues.
Out of home viewing gets trickier to measure as more viewers turn to streaming and more sports programming appears on streaming platforms.
Also Read: Nielsen, Arbitron Team Up on Portable People Meter
“Nielsen is highly focused on innovating in order to better serve our clients and ensure our measurement accounts for the full landscape of television consumption,” Deirdre Thomas, chief product officer, audience measurement, said. “We understand how important it is for our clients to be able to have the most complete picture of the audience, especially for special events like the Super Bowl.”
Nielsen plans to provide data including the additional meters in the fourth quarter of 2024, in time for Super Bowl LIX in 2025.
“We are appreciative of Nielsen’s efforts to make out-of-home measurement more complete, providing a much clearer picture of the true audience for all television viewing and especially sports viewership,” Paul Ballew, chief data and analytics officer at the NFL, said. “For years we have been consistent in our belief that major sports events, like the upcoming Super Bowl LVIII, are often viewed with family and friends in large gatherings and this expanded out-of-home viewership will be crucial to measuring those events.”
