Nielsen is launching an alpha test of its Nielsen One cross-platform media measurement system and The Walt Disney Co. and Magna Global are among around 10 buyers and sellers putting its new product through its paces.

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Nielsen will showcase Nielsen One Alpha in demos at CES next month as it takes the latest of several steps toward the full launch of Nielsen One in the fourth quarter of 2022, the company said. Disney and Magna, part of Interpublic Group of Cos.’ IPG Mediabrands, are among 10 companies that will be using the first version of the Nielsen One, said Karthik Rao, chief operating officer of Nielsen.

This is not a prototype but rather an early run of a fully functional measurement system Nielsen is looking at as its next-generation solution for measuring ad campaigns across all screens – including linear and connected TV, desktop computers and mobile devices, as Rao described it. Even so, Nielsen plans further “major enhancements” to Nielsen One on the way to a planned December 2022 launch, the company said in a statement.

Nielsen One Alpha provides deduplicated age and gender information across media platforms.

It’s a crucial product for Nielsen as the successor to its TV ratings and Digital Ad Ratings services. Those measurement tools, while widely used to measure linear TV, CTV and digital video, are either under review by the Media Rating Council after formerly having accreditation (Digital Ad Ratings) or have had their accreditation suspended (TV ratings).

Similarly un-accredited measurement services from competitors such as Comscore and VideoAmp – already widely used by agencies to plan and optimize media buys – have been looking to make inroads in the past year as currency alternatives to Nielsen in media deals.

Nielsen One can’t be submitted for its own accreditation by the MRC – the industry’s arbiter of media measurement reliability – until it’s a finished product. But Rao in an interview said giving users such as Disney and Magna a chance to use the product in the early stages should assist in ultimately winning accreditation.

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“This is the first foray into truly cross-platform deduplicated reach and frequency across all four screens,” Rao said. “We announced we were going to do that by the end of the year in 2022, and that we would allow the market to get comfortable with it for a period of time. But along the way, clients are constantly asking questions. What is Nielsen One? What does it look like? How are you trying to accomplish this? And so we decided the best way for us to do that was to actually launch the full product in alpha phase, which essentially means it’s the first version.”

“We are pleased to join the Nielsen One Alpha program to ensure it accurately creates a holistic view of ad performance and content viewership for the industry,” Julie DeTraglia, head of research, insights and analytics for Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution, said in a statement.

Brian Hughes, executive VP and managing director of audience intelligence and strategy for Magna, stated: “We are pleased to be working with Nielsen to provide insight and feedback regarding Nielsen One and ensure it delivers on its promise of being a truly holistic cross-screen measurement solution.”

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Giving clients a chance to use Nielsen One in the early stages aims to show Nielsen’s commitment to agility and transparency – traits it’s been criticized for lacking in the past.

“It’s really important that clients who will ultimately use and gain value from this be involved in questions like what are the right metrics, the right views, the right analytics I can use,” Rao said. “We want to make sure we can iterate fast and take the feedback from the industry.”

Among other things, putting the Alpha version out there will let buyers and sellers see how Nielsen One’s data and analytics compare to what they’re getting from competitors using similar big data sets from set-top boxes and smart TVs.