Nielsen, Heal Thyself

What can be done about the Nielsen Company? That’s a question that increasingly comes up in my conversations with both broadcasters and advertisers. The level of mistrust swirling around the company’s numbers has risen to flood-condition status. Nielsen’s latest black eye swelled up on Nov. 17 when the Media Ratings Council announced it was revoking accreditation of Nielsen’s NSI service that includes 154 diary-only markets. The NSI service had been accredited by the MRC since September 1965.

The previous month, TVB got its own taste of suspect methodology when Nielsen issued a report asserting TV spot revenues were down 3.25 percent through the first half of this year.
This was wildly in conflict with every other media-research report, including Kantar data that showed revenues were in fact up by 24.4 percent. Numerous TV station groups’ public-earnings reports have indicated corporate coffers, swelled by increases in core business across the board as well as political dollars, are pacing upwards of 20 percent or more in 2010. And TVB’s private numbers (reflecting a very large cross section of local TV stations) show that no segment of the local broadcast TV industry experienced an actual decline in revenues in the first half — not by region, not by station size and not by network affiliation.

How could Nielsen have been directionally reversed — and off by nearly 30 points — from everybody else? A statement from Nielsen to Media Daily News said: “In response to inquiries from the TVB, we reviewed the work that went into the report and have not found any internal discrepancies. We continue to have discussions with the TVB to see why we reached different conclusions and are hoping to meet with them soon.”

In other words: “We stand by our numbers.”

I wonder if Nielsen executives fully appreciate the extent of the damage done to the company’s reputation over the past year. As the research head of one large broadcast group said to me, “If these revenue numbers are so far off — and we have alternative ways of knowing that they are — what does that say about the reliability of the ratings data that we get from Nielsen and have no way of verifying from other sources?”

By now, stories about the dubiousness of Nielsen ratings are legion. When the revenue report controversy hit the trades, we received one e-mail from the general manager of an ABC station that said: “For 20 years we subscribed to Nielsen, and according to them, we never had a viewer during Good Morning America.”

Then there’s the matter of how Nielsen handled its “live-plus-same-day” data stream. Last year, Nielsen said it would add this new service to its local people meter and set meter markets, replacing the live-only metric in January 2010. Then it announced that the changeover would happen in March, which it did. Then, in July, it said the live stream would return.

Nielsen’s shifting position is noteworthy. It was ultimately detrimental to advertisers, agencies and broadcasters. The company was against the live stream before they were for it. TVB’s position on live-only ratings has been consistent: live-only no longer fully represents who has the opportunity to view programs and commercials each day.

Simply put, live-only ratings miss relevant viewing. They don’t include anyone who pauses viewing for more than 25 seconds and then resumes viewing without ever fast-forwarding.

They don’t include anyone who views in a “near live” manner — 20 percent of playback occurs in the first five minutes, 42 percent within the first hour and 61 percent in the same day. These playback patterns have been consistent over time.

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