Nielsen has gotten the go ahead from the Media Rating Council to integrate networks’ first-party data streaming data into its national panel-based TV measurement as part of a renewed accreditation, the company announced today.

The decision most immediately affects currency measurement of Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football.” Following a contentious review last year, the MRC didn’t vote to modify Nielsen’s accreditation to allow for its plan to integrate Amazon first-party data into its panel-based measurement.

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Nielsen said in September 2023 that it wouldn’t try to force the issue by modifying currency data to reflect Amazon first-party data, but would make both sets of data available to the market as it continued to seek MRC approval.

Amazon’s first-party data based on people logged into its servers routinely shows larger audiences than Nielsen’s panel data alone.

While the accreditation immediately affects Amazon measurement, it also could pave the way for accreditation of Nielsen panel measurement integrating first-party data from other streaming networks.

“The MRC’s audit of first-party streaming looked at the general methodology as well as the specifics of the Prime Video TNF integration,” a spokesman for the MRC said in an e-mail. “That first part, the general methodology and how that works do not need to be re-examined for a new streaming entrant into Nielsen’s process. However, for the next few integrations, the MRC will want to look at the integration specifics — Nielsen’s own certification processes, the data mapping, flow of the data, etc. This would be a lot lighter of a lift than what has been done thus far. If all goes well, approval would be a confirmation that all was integrated according to Nielsen’s stated process and agreement by the MRC committee.”

Persons-level granularity

Nielsen in a statement said the accreditation by the MRC, the ad industry’s quality vetting authority, makes it “the first accredited live-streaming solution with persons-level granularity.”

Comscore received MRC accreditation for measurement at a household level based on set-top box and smart TV data earlier this year, but accreditation for Comscore’s person-level viewer estimates based on a recently patented system remains under review by the MRC.

VideoAmp, iSpot.tv and Comscore also have incorporated first-party streaming data from networks into their measurement, according to people familiar with the matter, but their systems either aren’t MRC accredited or (for Comscore) are in the process.

Broadly, the fragmentation of streaming audiences makes them extremely difficult to measure using only a panel, even one the size of Nielsen’s, with more than 41,000 households. So Nielsen has been working to incorporate first-party data to cover streaming audiences.

In the statement, Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao called the MRC approval “a great affirmation of Nielsen’s ability to innovate at the speed of the market, while doing so in a safe and verified way.”

Much of the pushback from TV networks and non-Amazon streaming services against incorporating first-party data with Nielsen’s panel came based on the contention that other networks didn’t get an even chance to do such integrations. Since then, Nielsen has been making progress with other networks on such integrations, according to people familiar with the matter, which helped lessen resistance to approving the integration approach.

TV networks, other media companies, agencies and marketer members collectively get to vote on approving MRC accreditations.

Marketers and agency buyers broadly support integrating first-party streaming data into TV measurement, according to a survey of 200 executives from Advertiser Perceptions, which found four in five support Nielsen’s decision to include streaming platform first-party data for live programming to improve accuracy.

While some MRC members had objections to other aspects of renewing Nielsen’s panel accreditation, according to people familiar with the matter, it received approval, avoiding the sort of limbo that ensued when Nielsen’s accreditation was suspended in 2022.

Nielsen still has another accreditation in the works for its big data plus panel product, which also incorporates data from set-top boxes and smart TVs, the MRC spokesman confirmed.