It positive looks like Nielsen has had a tough go of it these days. (Once more.)
At the start of 2025, the TV measurement supplier appeared poised to enter this yr’s upfronts with the precise foot ahead. In January, it achieved Media Ranking Council (MRC) accreditation for its Huge Knowledge + Panel providing, which CEO Karthik Rao promised would offer “essentially the most correct measurement within the historical past of TV” in a press assertion on the time.
Not quickly after, Nielsen additionally advised advert consumers that it might be dropping its panel-only rankings and utterly endorsing Huge Knowledge + Panel as its most well-liked forex for upfronts, a change that many advertisers had been initially enthusiastic about. It even welcomed Paramount again into the fold in February after over 4 months of contract negotiations, signaling that, lastly, issues may be again on monitor.
However now that upfront negotiations are virtually over, the business seems to have settled again into its default place of being mad at Nielsen – which is probably going excellent news for its forex rivals, however not so nice for everybody else within the meantime, together with Nielsen, in fact.
What occurred?
Let’s rewind.
The large gossip at Cannes this yr revolved round a gathering that had taken place simply earlier than the competition on June 12 between the Video Promoting Bureau (VAB) and Nielsen, together with 9 heads of advert gross sales and 6 heads of analysis from numerous publishers and company holdcos.
The assembly was known as out of “abject frustration,” VAB CEO and President Sean Cunningham advised AdExchanger. Business leaders had been past fed up with discrepancies they’d been seeing in Nielsen’s Huge Dig Panel + Knowledge product – together with a steep month-over-month drop in adults aged 25 to 54 and a few sudden under- or over-indexing of demographics that don’t make sense in context. (It could be uncommon if a present with grownup themes instantly began rating increased with youngsters below 18, as a hypothetical instance.)
Among the heads of analysis suspected that Nielsen’s Family Demographic Evaluation Mannequin (HDAM) was responsible for these inconsistencies and had advised Nielsen so someday in June 2024, based on Cunningham.
The HDAM is a machine-learning algorithm that estimates demographic data for information units missing these particulars, comparable to set-top field information. Nielsen first included set-top field information to its TV rankings forex in late 2020, utilizing HDAM to assign demographics and enhance the accuracy of its viewers measurement.
In response to those issues, Nielsen agreed to look into making adjustments to its HDAM mannequin. Cunningham additionally mentioned that Nielsen “promised a month’s price of affect information in mid-July.”
Subscribe
AdExchanger Each day
Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox each weekday.
However in an e mail to purchasers despatched on July 10, Nielsen concluded that HDAM was “not driving significance in demographics between panel-only and Huge Panel + Knowledge providers,” and that making “piecemeal enhancements” to the HDAM would truly show extra disruptive than useful this late into the shopping for cycle.
Nielsen additionally mentioned it might not be making HDAM analysis information obtainable in NPOWER, which is the corporate’s viewers insights platform.
What’s the issue?
Extra so than another promoting channel, TV advert shopping for is a futures market, that means that publishers and advertisers alike want correct information to foretell the place they’re probably to succeed in their goal audiences within the upcoming tv season.
Some massive programmers – notably people who distribute large sporting occasions – have giant sufficient portfolios that they’ll overcome the challenges posed by inconsistent rankings information, mentioned VideoAmp EVP Aaron Lilly.
However midsized and long-tail networks are already struggling to measure their more and more fragmented audiences. As viewers spend time throughout extra channels, the panels to measure their habits essentially change into smaller and fewer consultant, making it troublesome to reliably extrapolate insights.
If smaller TV programmers can’t show proof of their viewers measurement and composition, advertisers will likely be much less doubtless to purchase with them.
Equally, new exhibits don’t have viewership information (as a result of they haven’t truly aired but) and are as a substitute sometimes offered towards current benchmarks for fashionable airtimes or related applications. If that information isn’t constant, both, then consumers is probably not keen to threat spending advert {dollars} on what’s, primarily, an unknown amount.
What’s subsequent?
That mentioned, Nielsen continues to be a behemoth. Seven of the most important companies, together with six holdcos, all not too long ago renewed long-term, multiyear partnership offers with Nielsen’s Huge Knowledge + Panel product.
“We’re proud to be the primary firm to earn accreditation for Huge Knowledge + Panel and first-party reside streaming, whereas persevering with to develop out-of-home measurement,” a Nielsen spokesperson advised AdExchanger in an emailed assertion. “And that solely covers the previous few months of enhancements for our purchasers.”
However given Nielsen’s current historical past – shedding its nationwide and native TV MRC accreditation in 2021, then gaining it again for nationwide TV in 2023 – being perceived as having unstable or unstable panel information might solely additional undermine the corporate’s present market dominance.
In the meantime, ongoing uncertainty across the accuracy of Nielsen’s measurement will doubtless reignite curiosity in multicurrency approaches, which picked up steam in the course of the roughly yr and a half that Nielsen was with out accreditation, however felt comparatively dormant in the course of the 2025 upfronts shows.
To be honest, most of Nielsen’s main rivals are not small, scrappy startups.
Each iSpot and Comscore achieved their very own nationwide TV accreditation in 2023 and 2024, respectively (together with native TV for Comscore, which Nielsen has not but earned again). VideoAmp formally initiated its personal MRC audit course of in Might.
Comscore, iSpot and VideoAmp have all three additionally been licensed by the Joint Business Committee (JIC), which, in contrast to the MRC, concentrates on the way in which consumers and sellers truly transact on numerous currencies. (To this point, Nielsen has not participated within the JIC certification course of.)
And Nielsen’s rivals spot a possibility if programmers’ belief in Nielsen numbers stays shaken. VideoAmp’s Lilly, for one, smells blood within the water. He feels assured that the following 12 months will present a “large alternative” for the choice forex firm.
“I’ve by no means been extra bullish in my three and a half years right here,” mentioned Lilly.
