TelevisaUnivision will offer VideoAmp as a Nielsen currency alternative as part of a broader deal that will also mean using the firm's tools for planning, targeting and cross-planning measurement.

The deal, to be announced today during VideoAmp’s “Currency Collaboration” event in Cannes, came as a result of VideoAmp’s long-term effort to better measure the U.S. Hispanic audience, particularly Spanish-speaking households, said Dan Aversano, senior VP of data, analytics and advanced advertising at TelevisaUnivision. 

It builds on work that includes last month's launch of the media company’s Hispanic identity graph—qualified through vetting by Truthset—that covers 85% of U.S. Hispanic households. And it follows six months of vetting and talks between TelevisaUnivision and VideoAmp.

“There’s a headline every day about new measurement providers and new currencies,” Aversano said. “We can debate what’s true or not. But what I can tell you is true is that these measurement providers have not put nearly enough thought, time, effort and frankly, resources, into ensuring their data is representative and inclusive of all minority groups.”

Aversano said VideoAmp has stood out from some other alternative measurement solutions. “We were really pleased just how leaned in they were,” he said. “They acknowledged the challenges, and they were extremely willing to roll up their sleeves, invest and put resources against ensuring that their data really is best in class in terms of representation and inclusivity.”

The Hispanic audience is particularly hard to measure because of a variety of “language strata” and the high prevalence of over-the-air viewing, which can’t be captured with set-top cable box data, Aversano said. But VideoAmp has extensive experience with smart TV data that can help capture over-the-air viewing, he said. “They’ve gotten their data to the point that we’re really confident and comfortable with it.”

“I think this is a pretty significant partnership, because it does show the market that big data can measure minority audiences, and U.S. Hispanics, accurately,” said Michael Parkes, president of VideoAmp. “The diversity of our data set is a big piece of that. We really pioneered the methodology of comingling set-top box and smart TV data. We have a very rigorous process of cleansing data, weighting and correction to make sure that we’re accurately representing audiences—Hispanic audiences specifically.”

A recent update VideoAmp made to improve weighting and representation of over-the-air viewing households, Parkes said, “is very meaningful for them, and for Spanish-language network representation.”

Certainly Nielsen will offer some reasons to doubt that. Part of the company’s case for its continued predominance in TV and cross-platform audience measurement, including during its recent NewFronts presentation, is the inherent bias of big data sets in counting minority households and of its panel of more than 40,000 households to better measure Hispanic and other minority viewers. Nielsen is developing its own Nielsen One measurement based on big device data sets, but has argued that its panel will help it better weight the data than its rivals can.