Nielsen is revisiting its measurement and currency road map.
On Thursday, Nielsen told its clients it will not, in fact, be sunsetting its average commercial minute (C3 and C7) ratings by September of next year as planned.
The company had previously said in 2020 that it would retire the metrics, which provide ratings based on TV viewing over the course of three and seven days, respectively, to address buy- and sell-side demands for more precise data in TV ad transactions.
Instead, audience panels plus bigger TV viewing data sets based on C3 and C7 metrics, not impressions, will become Nielsen’s endorsed currency for national TV ad buys.
But the ratings giant will also offer new impression-level measurement and its classic panel-only ratings for clients who ask for them. These will be available to advertisers and broadcasters using Nielsen ONE, the company’s new cross-platform measurement dashboard.
Why the change of heart? Turns out, many buyers and sellers say it’s still too early to transact on bigger data sets alone.
Nielsen commissioned Beall Research to interview clients across the buy and sell side about their current measurement needs, and the main takeaway among both advertisers and publishers was that neither believes the “plumbing” is ready to provide impression-level TV measurement, said Deirdre Thomas, chief product officer at Nielsen. Which is why, in the meantime, TV buyers and sellers will still need C3 and C7 to forecast campaigns.
This cautious sentiment helps explain why alternative currencies didn’t make waves during this year’s upfronts. Programmers and agencies are still busy figuring out how the technical integrations will actually work.
Back to basics
This is not the first time Nielsen extended its timeline to deliver on a promised currency update. But the company doesn’t consider this latest revision to represent a significant change in plans.
“The only thing that’s changed is listening to the fact that clients aren’t ready to relinquish [C3 and C7],” Thomas said. “We’re making sure they have the flexibility and choice they need.”
Thomas insisted that Nielsen isn’t going back on “anything we said we were going to do,” referring to impression-level measurement. “We’re [still] continuing to innovate and introduce new data,” she said.
Even though Nielsen’s main currency will still depend on C3 and C7 metrics, the company is flexing its big data muscles.
It announced a partnership with LG for access to the TV distributor’s automatic content recognition data and also renewed its deal with Comcast over the summer so it can use the cable company’s set-top box data for both national and local TV measurement starting next year. (Nielsen already uses Comcast data for some local measurement.)
Once both integrations are complete, Nielsen says it will have access to national viewing data from more than 60 million US households, in addition to the viewing data it already gets from Roku, Vizio, Dish and DirecTV.
Getting bigger
Speaking of big data, it will be part of Nielsen’s currency menu next year, despite the delay to sunset C3 and C7. Big data will be available to measure impressions for individual spots in addition to average commercial minutes.
Nielsen is working on a new offering coming in September called Individual Commercial Metrics, that is built with “the same raw ingredients” as Nielsen’s other two currency options (panel-only and panels plus big data), Thomas said. The difference is that Nielsen will provide a rating for every spot in a program rather than the average commercial minutes over three or seven days, which had long been the norm.
Digital and CTV buyers especially need impression-level measurement from Nielsen to so they can compare linear and streaming viewership for their national buys.
But there are still agencies and media companies that might prefer C3 and C7 metrics.
For example, buyers running ads within sports programming can get higher overall ratings if they use C3 or C7 because viewership often varies widely throughout sports seasons, Thomas said. Measuring average viewership over several days can preclude the possibility of low ratings for commercials that play during games that don’t get as much tune-in.
Panels FTW
But despite responding to the TV industry’s push for big data, Nielsen will not “shirk away” from panels, Thomas said.
“Panels are always going to play a role in what we do,” she said, noting that buyers and sellers can’t reasonably transact on big data without them, even if just for research purposes.
The rest of the TV industry seems to agree.
“Panels have actually become trendy,” Thomas said, although Nielsen panels work a lot differently than what media companies and trade orgs like to call “calibration panels.”
Panels help buyers and sellers validate reach and frequency counts for measurement that uses big data. (Third-party data providers often get viewing information wrong, including household identifiers and ethnic background.)
“We believe the combination of panels plus big data is the best way to measure [TV viewing],” Thomas said.
