Nielsen's Woes Continue, Admits OOH Undercounting Since 2020

On Tuesday, Nielsen was excitedly looking ahead to its future, touting next month’s rollout of Nielsen One Alpha, the first version of its cross-platform tool that will enable publishers and marketers to transact on a single metric across linear and digital platforms. With Disney and Magna among the 10 agencies, advertisers and publishers participating in Alpha ahead of next December’s full Nielsen One rollout, the offering showcases the “new Nielsen,” Nielsen COO Karthik Rao told Adweek. But just one day later, the “old Nielsen” took center stage once again—more specifically, the measurement company’s continued stumbles related to audience undercounting during the pandemic that have dominated headlines this year, causing the Media Rating Council to strip Nielsen’s national and local TV ratings services of their accreditation in September. On Wednesday, Nielsen informed its clients, including TV networks and agencies, that it has undercounted out-of-home audiences for national TV programming since September 2020. The company blamed a software issue for the error and said it will begin to share some corrected figures by the middle of next month, though the release of OOH viewing from those late 2020 months is “TBD,” according to Variety, which first reported the news. Nielsen told Adweek in a statement, "As part of routine testing and quality controls, we recently identified an error that caused an understatement of reported out-of-home audiences for our National TV service. While there is no impact to most telecasts and no impact to local television, we did find some variances for events that tend to yield larger out-of-home audiences, such as live sporting events. The error has been corrected and Nielsen will be reissuing data from September 2020 to present in order to provide the industry with the most complete data." Execs Grade the TV Industry on How It Tackled Measurement Problems This Year As expected, the news was not received well by the networks who have been publicly battling Nielsen for much of the year over its pandemic measurement shortfalls. “Today’s announcement by Nielsen of more systemic errors that have further undercounted TV ratings for the last 16 months is unfathomable, both for Nielsen and the buyers and sellers that use Nielsen data as trading currency,” Sean Cunningham, president and CEO, VAB, said Wednesday in a statement. “While the VAB and our Measurement Innovation Task Force have been looking to build back confidence in Nielsen’s core measurement capabilities, the timing of this latest and stunning omission of OOH viewership not being counted across the growing broadband only home universe coincides with our recent discovery of significant defects in Nielsen’s overall plans to include broadband only homes in early 2022 for local TV. "Given the unprecedented scale of Nielsen’s 2021 undercounting and the depths of discovered defects in their core competency on TV measurement, we are greatly concerned that Nielsen One is being built atop a broken and defective measurement and currency foundation.” The OOH news caps a tumultuous year for Nielsen, which in May confirmed what networks had been alleging for months: that it had undercounted viewers earlier in the year. Nielsen has vowed to make the appropriate fixes, but several companies and organizations are now working to create their own measurement alternatives, including NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and ViacomCBS, which just last week said it would be partnering with Dentsu on pilots that will utilize VideoAmp data to transact against, instead of Nielsen or Comscore metrics. Just yesterday, before the Nielsen OOH news broke, Adweek published thoughts from TV network presidents, ad sales chiefs and buyers about how the TV industry had tackled its measurement problems this year. In that story, Farhad Massoudi, CEO and founder, Tubi, noted that “without a doubt, the thing that needs to be addressed first going into 2022 is regaining confidence in the industry’s biggest measurement player”—i.e. Nielsen. And David Campanelli, co-chief investment officer, Horizon Media, said that “I believe we are on the verge of a tipping point in terms of measurement of video and the currencies we transact on moving forward ... What first needs to be addressed is what other measurement currencies exist that are valid and can serve and advertisers', agencies’ and sellers' needs in the way Nielsen does now.” Objections to broadband only homes in local panels Meanwhile, as the OOH news broke, other parties are renewing their objections to Nielsen’s imminent shift to impressions-based local TV buying, specifically the inclusion of broadband only (BBO) homes into Nielsen’s local panels, starting next month. In his statement above, VAB’s Cunningham pointed to “significant defects” in Nielsen’s plans to add BBO homes into its local panels and the MRC has also called on Nielsen to hold off on integrating those BBO homes. On Wednesday, Wendy McMahon, president and co-head of CBS News and Stations, sent a letter to Nielsen, urging them to delay adding the BBO homes to the local panels, writing that “ViacomCBS strongly objects” to the BBO integration. “Nielsen has not made sufficient progress in rectifying this underreporting by getting the local market samples back to acceptable quality levels,” McMahon wrote. “According to CBS’ analysis of first and third party research, Nielsen is overstating/over-representing BBO penetration. "There is nothing that we have seen so far that gives us confidence that Nielsen is ready to include BBO Homes into the local marketplace. The financial impact to our stations, based on the only impact data available to us, will be significant.” Update: Nielsen released the following statement Thursday morning: "As previously announced, Nielsen will begin including Broadband Only Homes in Local TV Measurement on January 6, 2022. We have completed the audit of the Broadband only universe estimates. Separate from the BBO UEs, additional concerns were raised by the MRC TV Committee, including the collection of data and crediting from the Nano meter. Our findings show that the Nano meter accurately credits codes and signatures when it remains properly installed. We will continue to make improvements to our procedures that ensure ongoing correct meter set up in panelist households, and are sharing those details with the MRC and clients. The integration of Broadband Only Homes in January will provide buyers and sellers with a more complete view of video consumption and a consistent framework for combining and comparing metrics across channels and platforms." Nielsen Debuting First Version of Nielsen One Cross-Platform Metric Next Month

Measurement

Nielsen’s TV Measurement Woes Continue As It Admits OOH Undercounting Since 2020

Corrected estimates won’t be available until next month

Jason Lynch

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Jason Lynch