Upfront negotiations are over, and the fall broadcast season is about to begin.
And acquiring ad verification company DoubleVerify isn’t the only news item on Nielsen’s docket this month.
Just in time for new TV programming to hit the screens in September, Nielsen is rolling out a few upgrades to its video measurement currency that will go live by the end of August. Its Big Data + Panel product – which combines legacy audience panels and more detailed data sets, such as automatic content recognition data sourced directly from smart TVs – is getting some new additions intended to make the measurement approach more accurate.
Improving measurement accuracy really means “removing bias” and getting closer to reality, said Brian Fuhrer, Nielsen’s SVP of product strategy and thought leadership.
With the goal of fighting measurement bias in mind, Nielsen is expanding its audience and data makeup to more accurately account for previously underrepresented demographics. It also wants to shore up its measurement of co-viewing, or when multiple people are watching the same TV set simultaneously.
Nielsen is also addressing criticisms that its use of data from the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)’s DASH TV Universe Study didn’t match up to publishers’ perceptions of their current audience viewership numbers.
The solution to all of these concerns? Surprise! More data.
Wait … Who’s there?
On the demographic representation front, Nielsen is adding two new data sets to get a better accounting of Spanish-language TV audiences.
Generally speaking, third-party measurement providers have historically struggled to properly account for Hispanic and Latino audiences, which are only becoming more important to reach as that demographic’s size and purchasing power keeps climbing.
For example, some data brokers have categorized Spanish-speaking audiences based on unreliable data points, such as surname. But the primary language of a household has a more “significant impact” on its TV viewing patterns than the family’s last name, Fuhrer said.
Which is why, going forward, Nielsen will incorporate data from the American Community Survey to more accurately determine whether particular households use Spanish at home. (Nielsen already uses data from the National Hispanic Enumeration Survey.)
Nielsen also cares about getting co-viewing right.
To that end, the company plans to better incorporate data from its wearable devices, which resemble smart watches, into its measurement methodology. Nielsen first rolled out these wrist-worn devices in 2021 as an upgrade to its older, pager-like devices. The goal of the 2021 rollout was to improve cross-platform measurement accuracy. But, more recently, Nielsen piloted a new co-viewing methodology using the devices earlier this year during the Super Bowl.
You might have questions about the scale of this newer wearable-based measurement approach (like, “Do people really wear these things?”).
Well, according to Nielsen, the wearables are a somewhat more reliable form of TV measurement than the company’s traditional meters placed in panel homes, which require an active log-in before a viewing session. Instead, the wearables offer a more passive form of measurement, considering the viewer doesn’t have to do anything other than wear the device.
Without the user friction of requiring a log-in, Fuhrer said, Nielsen should be able to measure co-viewing more accurately.
ARF? More like woof
Nielsen is also improving its use of survey data from the ARF’s DASH TV Universe Study, which it first began implementing within its Big Data + Panel methodology at the beginning of the year.
When Nielsen originally integrated ARF’s DASH survey data, it sparked backlash from some publishers. Critics said the change was causing a spike in traditional TV ratings and a sharp decline in streaming viewership numbers.
According to Fuhrer, those disparities came down to delays in processing the necessary data. Initially, the ARF data sets Nielsen received were between 12 to 15 months old on average, he said, which is a “long lag time in a rapidly changing environment” for publishers that need a more up-to-date snapshot of their audience reach before they can sell ads at a price that makes sense.
That lag time would explain why publishers were pushing back on what they perceived to be an egregious discrepancy between their Nielsen ratings score card and, well, present reality.
But going forward, Nielsen says it will be obtaining data from ARF in a much timelier manner. Nielsen declined to specify that degree of timeliness, but said that some of these intended improvements will come from its efforts to more closely tie these data inputs with information from its legacy audience panels. That closer tie should help more accurately measure the balance between traditional and streaming viewership.
Plus, Nielsen said that ARF’s DASH Universe Study data will also become part of Nielsen’s Gauge report, which tracks the popularity of particular content titles and media sellers based on watch hours.
Earlier this year, Nielsen had decided to delay incorporating the data into its Gauge report due to seller concerns about the apparent decline in streaming numbers. (Although the data was still part of the Big Data + Panel currency offering.)
Taken all together, these changes aim to improve how Nielsen measures co-viewing and viewer demographics, as well as how traditional TV consumption compares to that of streaming.
Correction 8/19/26: This article was updated to clarify the timeframe around new data sources Nielsen is using to improve measurement accuracy.
