Nielsen Will Overhaul Video Measurement, Creating a Single Cross-Media Offering

Farewell, Total Audience Measurement. Hello, Nielsen One. In a major overhaul of its video measurement, Nielsen is preparing to offer a new cross-media solution called Nielsen One. The video analytics tool, announced today, will enable publishers and marketers to transact on a single metric across linear and digital platforms, including live TV, DVR, VOD, connected TV, mobile and computer. The offering will also show marketers the total video consumption across all platforms and give them the flexibility to break down those numbers by individual platforms. As it transitions to Nielsen One, the measurement company will be sunsetting its Total Audience Measurement tool, which Nielsen first introduced five years ago. Still, Nielsen One is at least two years away from rolling out in the marketplace. Nielsen doesn’t plan to launch the new measurement offering until Q4 2022. Beyond that date, Nielsen said the industry won’t fully transition to—and transact on—the new metrics until fall 2024. The new offering represents a “massive change” for the industry, which has been calling for measurement improvements for several years, according to Scott Brown, Nielsen’s general manager of audience measurement. Until now, the $70 billion in annual TV ad revenue “has been really closely aligned with the linear world, and all buying and selling of digital media has operated completely separately,” Brown said. “This is a really game changing moment in the industry, where we're saying that we're building this product, so that in the future, if a marketer wants to truly do buys across platforms, the numbers will be there—with a validated audience—to do so.” As consumers move between linear, streaming and digital platforms, advertisers have been calling for single, deduplicated view of those audience across all platforms, and publishers want to offer more ad options and formats for buyers. “Every network has a digital-first strategy now,” said Brown, pointing to last week’s Discovery+ announcement. “While there’s a lot to work out, what we’ve been hearing in the market is the time is now, to take that step from Total Audience to Nielsen One, moving away from only analytics to posting. All our clients are digital-first and so is Nielsen. So we’re going all-in on bringing streaming and digital together with our core business." Nielsen, which is calling its new offering “the holy grail of measurement,” is bringing its tech platform together as part of the shift: uniting its platforms, panels and products under the One moniker. Previously, the company’s various Total Audience products—including total ad ratings, digital content ratings and digital ad ratings—“were never really meant to be a true posting product for buying and selling,” said Brown. But with Nielsen One, the company will be able to measure individual campaigns and ads across every platform. Total Audience Measurement was “a foundational piece of the house,” said Brown, “and now we're building on top of that to converge those different products.” Given the industry’s eagerness for expanded measurement, there is likely to be some grumbling about the fact that the new product won’t be ready for two more years, and won’t be fully implemented for two years after that. Brown said Nielsen is offering a two-year cushion from 2022-2024 “solely for the purposes of helping the industry transition.” If the industry is prepared to switch over sooner, “we will be ready.” However, “all of the industry’s infrastructure around how linear is bought and sold will need to change,” said Brown. “Everyone will have to do some work in order to buy and sell in a completely different way.” That includes changing the C3 and C7 metrics agreed to in 2006 by buyers and sellers. Of course, Nielsen also pushed for a similar C3/C7 transformation when it rolled out Total Audience Measurement, and those metrics remain unchanged. Nielsen said many of its recent big initiatives and announcements—which will roll out in the coming months—have been in service of transitioning to Nielsen One. Those product releases include unveiling a new ID system to bolster cross-platform measurement, adding addressable ads to national TV measurement and expanding its connected TV measurement next year to YouTube and YouTube TV. As part of the transition to Nielsen One, Nielsen will be working to join its national TV panel, which currently includes around 120,000 people, with the roughly 70,000 panelists that help measure its audio service and out of home service. The company provided some statements from industry leaders who were in support of the Nielsen One news. "Any innovation that moves the needle on capturing true ROI across media, especially across platforms to create consistency in reporting so people aren’t grading their own homework, gets a thumbs up from IPG Mediabrands. We look forward to holding all media to the same standards of performance accountability and transparency as a result of Nielsen’s new product,” said Daryl Lee, global CEO, IPG Mediabrands. Added Dentsu Media CEO Doug Ray, “Cross-media measurement is paramount to maximize reach across platforms with the right frequency. We are encouraged by Nielsen’s commitment to a single measurement solution and unified framework that will drive comparability across TV and digital video so that our clients can better allocate dollars and maximize ROI.” However, media companies have been quiet so far about Nielsen's announcement. Several declined comment when contacted by Adweek, explaining their execs had not yet been fully briefed about the new offering. That included NBCUniversal, which after publicly complaining about Nielsen's measurement shortcomings for the most few years, now transacts on its its own Total Audience Delivery metric, which includes audiences across linear, digital and out of home.