Week in Media: When America sneezes…
It’s right that Nielsen (and BARB) are held to high standards. What about the rest of the media ecosystem?
Amid all the chaos and tragedy of the US exit from Afghanistan, you’d be forgiven for missing a significant media story that has broken in recent days from ‘across the pond’.
American broadcasters have expressed concern that TV measurement company Nielsen’s decision to stop sending field agents to Nielsen homes during the pandemic has spoiled the numbers. A Media Ratings Council review found that Nielsen undercounted viewers aged 18-49 by 2% to 6% during February.
The Video Advertising Bureau, which represents many of the big US TV networks, last month called for the MRC to suspend Nielsen’s accreditation, partly because of the panel’s problems during the pandemic.
Then last week, Nielsen asked the MRC – which accredits audience measurement services used by buyers and sellers – to put its accreditation on hiatus in order to address issues with its panels. That came after Discovery CEO David Zaslav called for the TV industry to abandon Nielsen completely.
The company also wants to focus on the development of Nielsen ONE, its media measurement currency across linear, CTV, mobile and desktop, which is expected to launch at the end of next year.
Nielsen has long been accused of undercounting TV viewership but this new spat feels different because of factors we’re seeing ourselves in the UK.
Firstly, the adoption of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other streaming platforms is forcing TV broadcasters to “sell” TV harder than ever before.
While TV advertising is a serial winner in ad effectiveness studies, a plateau in ratings (especially with younger viewers) for linear programming means more pressure to deliver on video-on-demand.
As I’ve written previously for Campaign this year, this has been good news for media agency execs (particularly planners), who are in-demand because they know how to form strong relationships with advertisers.
But secondly, and perhaps more consequentially, the pressure to deliver accurate and trusted TV measurement has never been greater.
Advertisers have become used to digital media campaigns delivering real-time, granular metrics to tell them how well it performs.
Hence, why ISBA is pressing ahead with its cross-platform measurement product Origin “with even more enthusiasm and momentum than before”, even if ITV, Channel 4 and Sky have so far refused to fully come on-board and fund its development. Hence, too, why Nielsen wants to focus on developing Nielsen ONE.
The problem is, no one seems to have convincingly answered the fundamental problem with cross-platform measurement.
Even if you can stop double-counting audiences across different media, how do you quantify a skippable YouTube pre-roll view versus a MailOnline view in a browser versus an ITV view for the same ad?
The MRC, the same body which accredits Nielsen, says a display ad will be considered as “viewable” if 50% of the ad creative is visible for at least one second in the viewable space of the browser.
Imagine if someone were to suggest a TV ad is “viewable” if half of the spot was visible for at least one second.
It would never happen because we expect better from TV. We don’t accept that TV broadcasters can report their own numbers without independent verification and we don’t accept such low standards for what counts as a viewable ad.
Cross-media measurement is a difficult problem to solve but it must be solved as streaming TV will continue to become even more popular relative to linear TV, as will watching user-generated video on YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.
There are definite rays of hope with the promising development of C-Flight, now a joint broadcaster venture in the UK between Sky, ITV and Channel 4.
Barb, which celebrated its 40th anniversary as the UK’s TV audience measurement service this month, is also taking steps to innovate by adding smartphone viewing data to its audience panels (via people’s internet routers) and is set to launch content ratings for ad-free streaming platforms Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
TV gets a higher level of scrutiny because remains the most impactful medium for delivering high-reach marketing for advertisers and, as good value as it may be, it’s not cheap to make and buy TV ads.
Of course, Nielsen should be held to account for failing in measuring TV audiences, as should Rajar, Pamco, ABC, UKOM and any other measurement body.
Advertisers that fund the TV industry deserve high standards of TV measurement in return. Perhaps it’s time they did the same for other media, too.