TV measurement

As broadcasters do their best razzle dazzle routines at the upfronts, streamers and MVPDs alike, including Roku and DirecTV, are busy building programmatic ad tech stacks.

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.

Startup Telly announced it’s giving away 500,000 smart TVs completely for free to the first 500,000 folks who sign up on its website. Signups for the TVs include an agreement that customer data can be used for targeted advertising.

Smart TV manufacturers held NewFronts presentations where they bragged about their automatic content recognition (ACR) data, which the industry has been putting on a pedestal because it can add a level of consistency to TV measurement.

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

The most interesting nuggets coming out of the NewFronts presentations this week are candid moments that reflect the debate raging between broadcasters, ad buyers and alternative measurement providers looking to dethrone Nielsen.

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.

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“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.

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

Nielsen has re-earned its accreditation from the Media Rating Council for national TV ratings. But will Nielsen be able to regain the industry’s trust before it’s too late?

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.

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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.

Warner Bros. Discovery decides to transact media with VideoAmp and Comscore currencies during its upfront this year.

Now that short-form video giant YouTube is entering the TV measurement debacle, fresh debate is afoot.

Television advertising has the reputation of mainly being a vehicle for branding. But that’s a misconception, says Arjun Kapur, managing partner and founder of Comcast’s Forecast Labs.

Innovid confirmed plans to lay off 10% of its global staff this year. But considering the external pressures, the numbers it reported for Q4 could’ve been worse.

Identity. Measurement. Clean rooms. Privacy. Each of these topics got plenty of airtime at our Industry Preview in New York City.

Privacy and measurement were overarching themes of CES. Not to say that the two don’t overlap.

First, get our boots-on-the-ground CES rundown on all things TV. Then: a roundup of Big Tech’s antitrust troubles in 2023.

TV industry execs talked clean rooms at CES – including their ironic lack of interoperability. Advertisers will need more than just clean rooms to solve for measurement.

National broadcasters, including Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox and NBCU, are forming a joint industry committee to create a standard for multiple cross-platform video currencies in time for the 2024 upfronts. Notably absent from that initial list: Nielsen.

Phase one of Nielsen ONE is finally complete. ONE Ads, the first module of Nielsen’s cross-screen measurement platform Nielsen ONE, will be available starting January 11.

In 2022, Nielsen was no longer king, alternate currencies stole the show and a new type of panel emerged. Could 2023 be the year that measurement finally matures?

It’s almost impossible for advertisers to know who’s really sitting in front of a TV screen, and they typically aren’t told what content their ads are running against, either. TV measurement companies are turning back to panels for help. Panel-based measurement provider TVision announced a $16 million venture round led by alternative TV measurement provider iSpot.

Like it did for the web, programmatic is transforming linear TV ad buying. But TV calls for a more nuanced approach. The programmatic technology that automates ad serving on TV will have to be different from the rest of the digital ad ecosystem, said Pooja Midha, EVP of Effectv, the ad sales division of Comcast Cable.

The growth of streaming has pushed TV into the realm of digital media, enabling data-driven, audience-based advertising and near-real-time impression-level decisioning. This new era of TV advertising requires a new era of measurement that delivers the granularity and speed advertisers need to maximize campaign performance.