Nielsen opens big data for trading without MRC accreditation or explaining some of its figures

Nielsen will make its big data measurement available broadly for buyers and sellers of TV inventory starting this week in a move that could provide a substantial boost for at least one Spanish-language network and lift thousands of other program slots. Nielsen is putting big data out for trading ahead of the industry’s quality arbiter, the Media Rating Council, accrediting it. Audits appear to be complete, but they have yet to be presented to MRC members, and meetings aren’t scheduled until Aug. 31 and Sept. 6. Also: Nielsen incorporates Amazon data, networks demand answers Ad Age Media Summit Hear from industry leaders during October event in NYC Register here And while a client letter last week makes it sound like Nielsen big data will officially be a currency after months in limbo, MRC CEO George Ivie terms its pronouncement “wishy-washy.” In an Aug. 21 letter to clients, Nielsen Chief Research Officer Pete Doe said big data “will be available for measurement by buyers and sellers” effective in September, though other industry executives pegged the effective date as Aug. 28. Doe added that Nielsen’s MRC-accredited panel data “will continue to be used as a currency for linear TV.” Gains for Spanish-language, zero-rated shows Doe noted that Spanish-language networks are among the beneficiaries of the shift to big data compared to Nielsen panel ratings. But he couldn't explain why some networks fare much better than others. He said the move also has broad impact for thousands of programs and time slots that currently show up with no audience whatsoever in panel-based ratings. For example, of more than 362,000 broadcast, cable and syndicated program telecasts Nielsen covered with its panel in the first quarter of 2023, nearly 25%, or 89,000, showed up with no viewers in the 18-34 age demographic. With big data, that number of zero-rated telecasts dropped to just 0.4%. “The new measurement is therefore addressing an increasing and significant pain point in measurement, where some smaller rated events are not viewed by people in research samples even though there is an audience in the population,” Doe said in his letter. “This manifestation of sampling error is very effectively addressed.” It’s progress, said one network executive, who however added that Doe’s letter glossed over the fact TV networks and local stations have for years been unable to sell ads on such zero-rated programs, losing millions if not billions of dollars on the sort of lesser watched, fragmented inventory that digital publishers can trade programmatically. Nielsen's long and winding big data road MRC committee meetings to review separate audits of Nielsen’s smart TV data and cable and satellite set-top box data are set for this week and next, and the results of those are uncertain. Nielsen backtracked on offering use of its big data as currency in April in the face of pushback from TV networks and some agency executives who said it had provided too little data too late about the historical impact the new methodology would have on ratings. That move came just after Nielsen’s household panel-based national TV measurement service had its MRC accreditation restored, and those panel-based ratings remained the predominant currency in this year’s upfront. Nielsen’s move now appears to mostly affect scatter deals until next year’s upfront. “This year’s upfront was done on panel,” said Sean Cunningham, CEO of TV network trade group the Video Advertising Bureau. “So the idea of mixing and matching two different currency sets is kind of a non-starter for 99% of advertisers. I’m struggling to think of one advertiser I’ve ever worked with that made deals with multiple currencies from the same provider.” Read more upfront news from Ad Age It's a positive, however, that buyers and sellers get a chance to get a better idea of how the big data “successor currency” affects audiences, possibly trading on it in scatter, prior to next year's upfronts, Cunningham said. Technically, the MRC audits to be reviewed over the next two weeks aren’t for the new Nielsen One product. They’re for big data components that ultimately will be part of that product but are currently being considered as part of Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings. The MRC audit and review process may be moving faster than some people want, but that’s driven by the fact that Nielsen is going to market with big data, so it needs to be examined fast, said MRC’s Ivie. “It’s a bit of a wishy-washy situation,” Ivie said. “They’re not calling it a currency. In September, when it hits, they’re calling it a new measurement. … I have to audit that, because that’s altering the production system for a national service. So I’m auditing that as hard and as fast as I can, because it’s a huge change.” Nielsen officially rolled out its Nielsen One next-generation cross-platform measurement, incorporating big data, in January. But the company hasn’t broadly supported use of its big data for trading, just for planning. Facing pushback from some media companies, notably TelevisaUnivision, according to people familiar with the matter, Nielsen did in April say sellers and buyers who wanted to trade on its big data could. Read more: Nielsen brings next-gen measurement to market Mixed impact for Spanish-language TV But TelevisaUnivision has found few if any takers among agencies for trading on Nielsen’s big data, according to people familiar with the matter. One agency executive expressed sympathy for the effort but resistance to trading on two separate Nielsen currencies at a time in the market. Another issue is disparate results for different Spanish-language networks for reasons that are hard to explain, industry executives said. Representatives of Nielsen and TelevisaUnivision declined to comment. Shifting from big data to panel alone lifted all Spanish-language networks fairly evenly, by mid-single-digit to low double-digit percentages. But in the key 18-34 demo, Univision gets two to four times the lift of other networks, one of which even showed a sharp decline in young viewers despite a gain in households, according to data obtained by Ad Age. In his letter, Nielsen’s Doe noted the issue but acknowledged he had no explanation. “The differences in Spanish language networks may reflect a potential panel recruitment bias for heavier tuning Spanish dominant homes (though we don’t have evidence of that),” Doe wrote. “But it may also reflect measurement bias of some form in the big data sources or the modeling techniques that we have employed. We get to the point with data evaluations where we have ruled out obvious errors and are left with differences that, in the absence of a definitive truth set, are unexplained.” Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here

Nielsen opens big data for trading without MRC accreditation or explaining some of its figures

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