Nielsen TV ratings lost industry accreditation last week and have come under all kinds of fire from TV networks and their trade group, the Video Advertising Bureau. But accreditation will be back sooner than many people think, according to Nielsen CEO David Kenny, who says it's more of a side issue, anyway.

Nielsen ratings remain the currency by which the vast majority of U.S. TV deals get done, even after the ad industry’s Media Rating Council—which has accredited Nielsen ratings for decades—voted to suspend accreditation indefinitely. Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings, which cover most U.S. digital video deals, has been on an accreditation hiatus since last year, too.

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But Kenny, in an interview with Ad Age, says he expects to restore MRC accreditations “within months” rather than the years predicted by some in the industry. He also says he’s committed to improving panel size and big-data analytics to better measure viewing by ethnic minorities, even as his primary focus remains getting the next-generation Nielsen One cross-platform measurement system up and running by next year.

Kenny released an open letter today acknowledging Nielsen was slow to disclose how health and safety measures during the pandemic reduced the size of its TV measurement panel and promising to be more transparent.

Nielsen is building its own “big data” stream from tens of millions of household devices, akin to what rivals already use. But Kenny says: “Big data alone is known to underrepresent multicultural communities as well as misrepresent media behavior across platforms.” This is part of Nielsen’s case for the continued relevance of its panel of approximately 40,000 households, which slipped to some 30,000 during the pandemic.

“The primary measurement cannot come from self-interested parties who are measuring themselves,” Kenny says in his letter. “History has shown that it doesn’t work. What does work is having a fully independent and unbiased organization” that’s audited, he says.

Nielsen will be that organization, he says in the Ad Age interview, as he questions whether rivals increasingly embraced as alternatives by TV networks will ever pass muster as deal currency.

How long do you think Nielsen’s TV ratings and Digital Ad Ratings will be without accreditation?

It’s months rather than weeks or years. I think we’ve addressed very openly and transparently what we’re dealing with, and I really hope we have an objective process. But more importantly, why I wrote the letter right now is, if we’re going to use this moment and put some things up in the air, let’s figure out what standards we really want to be accredited.

A lot of this has been evolving since the mid-1960s, and, personally, many of us are frustrated by things like 3MS [the industry’s Making Measurement Make Sense initiative] being a decade old. The [World Federation of Advertisers] has put together some really good principles, and the [Association of National Advertisers] is hard at work, and it’s time to measure the audience, whether that be a broadcast signal or a streaming signal, as all the same audience. But I think the conversation has gotten hijacked and become very one-sided.

A core part of accreditation is auditing, and we’re going to continue to be audited. We haven’t stopped anything, and the [MRC] vote doesn’t change our view or our accountability to produce the best measurement. We’re adding to the panel every day.

What I think we need to move forward on is whether there’s a better way to measure that truly deals with the consumer today, when 40% of people have cut the cord. When 28% of viewing time is streaming—and if you get to certain demos the majority of viewing time is streaming -- the legacy system is not the right system.

Is there a risk that rival providers take meaningful market share?

There's always that risk. We're never guaranteed a position as the currency of choice. The reason I want an open discussion is I want people to be eyes wide open. Some things can sound great, but were they validated by real people so that you made sure you weren't systemically biased against a racial group or a certain population or a certain geography? Were you truly comparable across streaming and broadcast? Are you really using effective techniques to deal with all the things we‘ve tried to deal with?

I certainly think that the world needs a currency. I think we're still in the best position to earn that.

There’s an implication in the letter that networks are looking to grade their own homework by bringing in these rivals. But Comscore, VideoAmp and others are tools already used by agencies and clients to optimize, to measure ROI. So if they’re willing to trust them for that, why should they be concerned about using them as currency in transactions?

First of all, I think it is important to separate currency measurement from analytics. If you look at any stable marketplace—the debt markets, consumer credit markets, insurance markets—you’ve got S&P, Moody's, Equifax. These ratings companies are foundational ground truths, and I think there needs to be a foundational ground truth of how many people saw my ad and how many times a day. It's the way brands are built. I'd hate to see the industry give that up.

Nielsen has come under criticism recently—and really for a long time—over measurement of minority audiences. Are you making improvements that get you to the panel size needed to meet those objections?

Yes. Some of that was old criticism, and I think there's been a lot of work. We have an external advisory council that I meet with every quarter. We were very transparent with policymakers and advertisers on how we're doing that, and we're doubling down to make sure that happens. And I defy somebody to be able to do that without real-world validation. Big data has a lot of bias in it as we all know, and we see every day in [artificial intelligence] and semantic search and things that don't have real-world validation.

The panel is one component. I think we're also getting better at other data sources and putting things together. I actually think you need to validate for every county for every ethnic group and every race, and we do that and we're going to continue to do that.

One of your competitors believes that, if you look at all TV measurement, north of 10% of deals today are already done on a currency other than Nielsen. Do you think that’s accurate?

It could be. But this is, fundamentally, people choosing to use analytics above the currency. I think this core currency measurement and measuring everybody is still a ground truth that everybody else builds on. So be careful what you're wishing for here because it's the ground truth that’s very important.

I've heard “be careful what you're wishing for” applied to networks that have been very critical of Nielsen and pushing for alternatives. Is there a risk that they upset the applecart in ways they don't foresee and aren't really that positive for them?

Possibly. This is why we have the open letter. I think there needs to be a more full and strategic conversation. This is not something just about the transactions of 2021 and 2022.

Every situation is different, but I think the networks are undergoing a fundamental change well beyond panel size. In fact, it's almost a diversion from the fundamental issue, which is how are you going to work in a world where most people don't have a cable subscription?

Is all the controversy of late something that could affect revenue or contract renewals? Does it make people more reluctant to sign a three-year renewal when there’s this much uncertainty?

I won’t say it’s a good thing, because it’s not. What I would say though is that accreditation is a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. It's not in the contracts. People will have to say if there’s a better way to transact. What I want to do is create the better way at Nielsen.

But I think people still need us. The upfront that just happened was written in Nielsen currency. So, I think we have to be strong. I think we have to be confident. And I think we have to be bold and move forward. To me, the risk is not moving forward. The risk is just allowing the narrative to be established by others, and have a narrative that sustains a legacy model longer as opposed to one that advances to a model that reflects the consumer today and tomorrow.

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