NBCU Calls For “Measurement Independence”; IAB Tech Lab Teams With The OAAA

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

Under Pressure

NBCUniversal is turning the screws on Nielsen as the MRC considers stripping its National TV rating. Nielsen has long dominated TV ratings but is under fire for underreporting viewers and missing visibility into streaming, mobile and desktop. The Olympics on NBC underwhelmed by traditional ratings, but NBCU told AdExchanger that those Nielsen numbers don’t account for Peacock, its streaming app, and other online streams. “The Olympics had more than 120 billion minutes of engagement, across all NBCU properties. Ratings alone did not tell the full story,” Kelly Abcarian, NBCU’s EVP of ad measurement and impact, said in an email. Abcarian also penned a blog post calling on the industry to adopt cross-channel reporting. The Nielsen One cross-channel currency is expected to launch late next year, but rivals like Comscore and digital-first players such as VideoAmp and iSpot are in-market already. NBCU, of course, has its own measurement tools. Abcarian didn’t say how the network would avoid a situation where NBC grades its own homework, if it uses a proprietary rating. As the industry awaits word from the MRC, Campaign reports that NBCU is extending an RFP to more than 50 measurement providers – including Nielsen – for advanced measurement solutions.

Dollar Dollar Billboards

The Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) announced a joint committee with the IAB Tech Lab to create openRTB standards for DOOH media. Even for out-of-home media that carries a screen and can serve an ad in real time, there hasn’t been much integration with other media channels. “Right now, consumers are reporting increased appreciation for out of home, and as consumer sentiment shifts during our reemergence from the pandemic, brands will demand the flexibility of programmatic to allow for changes to messaging, creative, and more,” said Leslie Lee, Vistar Media VP of marketing and co-chair of the new committee, in a news release. “Supporting this growing demand with standards that put DOOH on an even playing field with other programmatic mediums will be key.” The other co-chair is Ian Dallimore, VP and GM of programmatic at Lamar Advertising. The two industry orgs expect finalized specs by the end of this year.

Campaigning For Creators

YouTube spiked the football on Monday with a blog post boasting it reached two million members of the YouTube Partner Program (which is to say, revenue-generating accounts). The company attributed recent revenue growth – YouTube earned $7 billion in ad revenue in Q2 2021 and paid creators more than $30 billion in the past three years – to investments in copyright and content moderation services. “Our responsibility as a global platform has created this place that works,” Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief product officer, told Bloomberg. But YouTube’s true differentiator for creators compared to other social platforms is its arsenal of monetization options. YouTube creators now have 10 potential revenue streams: ads; contributing to the ad-free subscription service YouTube Premium; a branded content studio; merchandise; ticketing services that integrate with Ticketmaster, Eventbrite and more; memberships; YouTube’s own creative fund; plus three ways for live viewers to pay to pin comments atop streams or get the creator’s attention (which are popular in video game streaming).

But Wait, There’s More!

China has passed a data security law, state media reported. [Reuters]

Facebook is in the final stages of its agency review, with proposals from Dentsu, Publicis and Havas. [Ad Age]

Facebook is making M&A deals that fly under the radar of antitrust regulators. [Bloomberg]