TV currency

HyphaMetrics Co-Founder President Joanna Drews is resuming the role of CEO after Chris Wilson stepped down late last week.

Now that alternative TV currencies have passed the initial sniff tests, how should buyers and sellers compare their viewership numbers? The leaders of Nielsen, Comscore, iSpot and VideoAmp gathered onstage during the Coalition of Innovative Media Measurement summit in New York City to answer that question.

Nielsen held a press briefing to reassert itself as the go-to TV measurement and currency company ahead of upfront negotiations. To back up its assertion, it shared a status update on its currency offerings and a comparison to its competitors.

The MRC and the broadcaster-backed joint industry committee released a joint statement to clarify the difference between them, which has been a charged topic ever since the JIC formed last year.

This was such a busy year in CTV land that we had to launch a dedicated newsletter just to keep up with all the trends, from measurement, currency, targeting and attribution to streaming data, identity, supply-path optimization and new ad formats – just to name a few.

TV programmers and agencies say they’re ready to transact their ad buys using a measurement provider other than Nielsen. But panel-based currency is proving more difficult to dethrone than anticipated.

Agencies are busy gearing up to buy client campaigns on alt currency this upfront season. But the transition to alt currency is a work in progress, and the industry isn’t dumping Nielsen entirely.

This year, TV upfront spend will likely be softer, and buyers will be slower to make long-term commitments. Consider it a plateau.

Nielsen is reverting back to its panel-based C3 and C7 ratings that track average commercial time over three or seven days. The currency switch-up just weeks ahead of the upfronts has only added to the industry’s mounting frustrations with Nielsen.

The JIC is looking to set the record straight on not just its requirements for currency, but also that it believes those requirements are sufficient even without requiring MRC accreditation.

Just days after Nielsen won back accreditation for its panel-based national ratings, it stuck its nose in the air and declared its disapproval of the joint industry committee’s new video currency standards, which favor big data over panels.

“Measurement” and “currency” are often conflated in TV land, but they’re not the same. They have different standards and use cases – and these contrasts matter as the industry looks for a better way to transact TV ads.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Currency Contest Can the TV industry’s currency debate get any hotter? (For something so in the weeds, that is.) Guess so. Nielsen has formally repudiated the broadcaster-backed joint industry committee’s (JIC) video standards agreement. In a letter to OpenAP, the data vendor behind […]

The MRC reinstating its accreditation of Nielsen’s national ratings might improve the measurement giant’s standing in the TV currency race.

The goal of the TV joint industry committee (JIC) is pretty clear. But another debate is surfacing in the space: Is the JIC really a JIC?

The TV industry is on the path toward better measurement – but buyers are still lacking basic standards. The industry needs to get its act together if it plans to transact on new video currencies at the upfronts this year, says Kelly Metz, managing director of advanced TV activation at Omnicom Media Group.

Paramount, which is part of a new joint industry committee set on creating TV currency standards, held a conference to share a pulse check on TV currency and the JIC’s progress.

Connected TV has been a buzzword for years, but its categorization distinct from other over-the-top (OTT) media was only made official last summer. In August, the Media Rating Council (MRC) revised its official definitions to draw the line between CTV and OTT based on critical differences in measurement, viewability and attribution.