TV measurement was already complicated, but it’s about to get more so. One of the industry’s leading trade groups, the Advertising Research Foundation, wants to expand the definition of TV households to include most households that don’t have TVs.

Yes, it does seem like a non-sequitur. Marketers long have seen TV households as nearly universal in the U.S. and easily defined as households with TVs. But neither is quite true, according to new research from the ARF, which is calling on the marketing industry to move toward a new definition called “TV-accessible households.”

These would be considered households that don’t have TV sets, but do stream TV content to mobile devices via broadband. They account for about 4% of the U.S. population, with another 1% of households being true TV avoiders, owning neither TVs nor mobile broadband streaming. While only 4% of the population overall, the mobile-only group is growing fast and a much bigger segment among young adults.

Mobile-only TV watchers skew young

The ARF found 14% of households headed by someone ages 18-34 have no TV sets in them, and 39% of homes with single people ages 18-34 have no TV sets. Even the 35-54 age group skews slightly toward not owning TVs, making up 6% of households in that group.

Roughly four in five of all non-TV-owning households stream TV content to mobile devices only. That group is split about evenly between people with streaming service subscriptions and people who also see conventional linear TV programming via virtual Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (vMVPDs, such as YouTubeTV, Hulu and Sling), said Paul Donato, chief research officer of the ARF.

Also read: Streaming TV advertising in 2023

All this comes from newly released research from the ARF’s Universe Study of Device and Account Sharing (DASH), a syndicated study of the U.S. TV landscape based on tracking surveys from the University of Chicago. The study underpins how at least some measurement firms, such as VideoAmp and iSpot.tv, calibrate data from big-device data sets such as smart TVs and set-top boxes.

Invisible to 'big data' measures

But here’s the rub: Those big data sets, which are also an important underpinning of the new Nielsen One Ads cross-platform measurement system, plus Comscore, iSpot.tv, VideoAmp and others, don’t get any data from the 5% of U.S. homes that don’t have those devices. VideoAmp, Comscore and iSpot.tv, however, are focusing on getting server data direct from publishers to help measure that “non-TV” TV audience on mobile devices.

VideoAmp doesn't use a general “TV households” construct but instead breaks down the U.S. video landscape into over-the-air, MVPD and streaming-only household types, said Josh Chasin, chief measurability officer. “Households that watch what we think of as 'TV' exclusively through devices that aren't TVs fall into the stream-only bucket,” he said. “We then capture their viewing and campaign exposure via census measurement—using census streaming, desktop and mobile data directly from publisher ad logs.”

The more traditional VideoAmp TV household data does come from smart TV and set-top box data sets from Vizio, Comcast, TiVo and Frontier, he said.

“ISpot does use the ARF DASH data to build our universe and project to it,” said Vijoy Gopalakrishnan, chief research officer of iSpot.tv. And it goes beyond smart TV and set-top box viewing data, he said. “We also work with partner publishers to acquire streaming logs to report cross-channel viewing for major events that cut across both non-TV and TV devices," he said. “An expansion of this approach to cover all programming is currently in our roadmap.”

Comscore measures linear TV consumption on mobile in its Video Metrix and Cross Platform reporting, but not currently in its TV ratings, a spokesman said. The company measures mobile consumption both via publisher content tags and direct server integrations with vMVPD providers and publishers.

A person familiar with the matter said Nielsen One Ads, Nielsen One Content and Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings services are set up to capture viewing of linear or streaming TV via computers or mobile devices, without getting into details on how that data is collected.

Routers vs. servers

Measurement of streaming audiences via routers in homes, now used by Nielsen for its streaming panel of 20,000 households in the U.S., might help. But networks dispute how well that router data can capture program-level detail among the multitude of streaming options, or even how well it handles the simpler math of counting audiences in the aggregate.

At Paramount’s Measurement Now conference last week, John Halley, president of Paramount Advertising, and Kelly Abcarian, executive VP of measurement and impact of NBCUniversal, showed charts indicating major divergence between household router-based measurement of their streaming audiences and what their company’s own servers show.

Read more: TV industry prepares for the future of currency

Potentially, the streaming data feed from OpenAP encompassing server logs from those companies and other members of the newly minted Joint Industry Committee—including Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Hallmark Media, TelevisaUnivision and Roku—could fill in gaps from people who only stream on mobile devices.

But those networks, too, face hurdles setting up a system to share that data via OpenAP, then getting the system audited. And they only represent a fraction of the linear and connected TV market, excluding Walt Disney Co., Hulu, Google, Amazon, Netflix and others.

Based on a soon-to-be-released overview of measurement methodologies from the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, pixel tags on content and software development kits (SDKs) to track viewing on mobile devices among panelists appear likely parts of the ultimate solution in measuring viewing of TV content on mobile devices in the U.S., said Donato.

Non-TV households the norm outside U.S.

“TV accessible” households that don’t own TVs are the norm rather than the exception in much of the world outside the U.S., where most “TV” content is viewed on mobile devices. So companies with extensive experience measuring TV outside the U.S., including Nielsen and Kantar, might have an experience advantage measuring such audiences in the U.S.

“I’ve worked in Africa, and I’ve worked in India, and their primary video screen is a smartphone,” said Donato, a Nielsen veteran.

The ARF hasn’t prescribed a set date when the industry should adopt its expanded definition of “TV-accessible households.” But Donato said: “When you see real cross-platform data being used, I think there’s no way to avoid non-TV households. And also what it does is forces you to do a better job measuring mobile and non-TV devices in TV households.”

~ ~ ~
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misidentified Vijoy Gopalakrishnan, the chief research officer of iSpot.tv.