The day after the Super Bowl usually brings with it another kind of celebration: Nielsen’s annual announcement about the crowd size for the NFL extravaganza. This year, someone stole some of the plus-size highlights with one final run.
In the early afternoon hours of February 12, iSpot, one of the few audience measurement startups that is vying for business with many of Nielsen’s top buyers, issued “preliminary audience measurement estimates” for Super Bowl viewership, projecting The Big Sport drew more than 126.6 million viewers across TV, linear, streaming and outdoor viewing. Nielsen didn’t release its estimate — more than 123.4 million streaming and streaming viewers — until late in the evening.
The efforts to beat Nielsen were deliberate, says Stuart Schwartzapfel, senior vice president of media partnerships at iSpot. “We wanted to show that we could deliver correct and consistent overnight stays quickly and it was during this period that we were able to do that,” he says.
The skirmish illustrates the increased stress and risks for the company as it faces changing audience measurement protocols. Certainly, the drama of “Yellowstone” and “Game of Thrones” is no match for the battle your entire TV company is waging to control how the medium is measured. Corporations like iSpot and rivals like VideoAmp, Comscore and Luminate (owned by Selection parent company PMC) want to receive at least some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that media companies like Disney, NBCUniversal or Paramount International pay Nielsen annually. Meanwhile, Nielsen is poised to launch new tabulation techniques, like Nielsen One, that can account for audience video as it moves from linear to streaming and from one display type to another.
In keeping with Nielsen’s core business, these newer vendors have promised new types of data that help advertisers find smaller customer niches, such as people looking for a new car, moviegoers or growing families. In the streaming era, when more people watch their favorite TV shows on interactive broadband hubs like Hulu, Netflix or Max, entrepreneurs have to work harder to find their most likely customers, few of whom congregate in front of their TV screens. TV at a specific time. or date – i.e. Thursdays at 8pm on NBC to watch “Buddies”. Having this kind of information helps the linear audience, those they once counted on, to fragment and migrate to their own video paths on Hulu, Netflix or Tubi.
It’s no surprise that more measurement companies are gaining traction. Many executives involved in the sector believe there may be room for some of them to prosper. “It’s a multiplayer race,” says Steve Bagdasarian, chief business officer at Comscore. “I don’t see it as a winner takes all situation.”
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Companies vie for a spot as they plan their annual “early” market, when U.S. TV networks try to sell off most of their company inventory for the next programming season. Over the past two years, companies like Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Paramount, Fox and NBCUniversal have tested alignments with several of the new measurement departments, hoping to attract new business and put some pressure on Nielsen at the same time.
In 2024, there will be more: Comscore just gained accreditation for some components of its services from the Media Score Council, an industry watchdog that reviews the quality of audience measurement tools in certain local and local audience measurement service features. national. Previously, only Nielsen’s businesses had this broad seal of approval, which continues to be of great importance to many large advertisers.
Some non-traditional players have also entered the sector. From the following week onwards, Selection plans to publish new rankers analyzing the most-watched original films and TV series, using data from Luminate, a data and research company. The Luminate experience focuses on exclusive streaming movies and TV apps on subscription-based streaming platforms including AMC+, Amazon Prime, Discovery+, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Paramount+ and Peacock.
“We will very easily allow our partners and customers to see something like horror performance on a specific platform or a high school drama,” said Mark Hoebich, executive vice president and head of film and TV at Luminate. One difference with some data providers, he says, is that Luminate’s information is updated daily, while others take weeks to compile visualizations. Which means Luminate can approximate what was previously identified in the business as “overnight” how many people viewed content across various streaming platforms. Luminate cannot currently provide data on the age or gender characteristics of streaming viewers, but hopes to be able to start in the third or fourth quarter of 2024, says Hoebich.
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At a time when streaming is disrupting the normal business of media, there are many companies with lots of money hoping to make at least a few dollars while subverting the practice of counting the number of viewers who watch TV shows and commercials. Nielsen was purchased in 2022 by a personal justice consortium for $16 billion. Goldman Sachs in 2022 acquired a stake in iSpot valued at $325 million in iSpot. Raine Group, a media financing and consulting agency, supported VideoAmp.
Forging some new media standards could also help the industry gain new cash flows. Measurement is “one of the few levers” that companies like Paramount or Warner Bros. Discovery “can use it to really grow revenue,” says Peter Liguori, former head of FX community and CEO of Tribune, who was recently named president of VideoAmp. If media companies can be more precise about who is watching, there may be hope that advertisers will be more willing to pay higher rates because they will reach more potential customers. “How many additional products can you restrict, budgets can you restrict, people can you let go,” asks Liguori, noting that counting viewers more accurately can help generate new dollars.
Advertisers need the information and are open to new vendors providing it, says David Sederbaum, executive vice president and head of video financing at media buying giant Dentsu. There will be, he says, “a recognition that buyers and businesses need to make informed decisions that suit their business, rather than being told what to do. To some extent, we are not where there can be an adequate response.
Selection and Luminate will provide weekly score charts for exclusive streaming content starting March 24.
Evgeniy Zimin – inventory.adobe.com
Such sentiments won’t stop the best-known measurement company from trying to maintain its dominance in the scores that provide the cash for promotional pacts — and the numbers for bragging rights among Hollywood platforms and creatives. Nielsen, the gold standard in audience measurement for decades, is launching Nielsen One, a new system that will consider media use across linear, digital and broadband screens. And the company, whose lack of business accreditation for nearly a year and a half allowed some of its newer competitors to gain ground, gained some leverage by reversing its plan to abandon the old metrics the company still uses, the so-called “tabs” C3” and “C7” that study the audience ranges of common commercial minutes up to three or seven days after the advertisements were broadcast. Nielsen had previously planned to abandon the measures by fall 2024.
“We were wrong when we said we would eliminate this different thing” while we were bringing new products to market, says Deirdre Thomas, chief product officer at Nielsen. “We listened to our buyers and they can’t seem to get rid of” the C3 and C7. And although Nielsen has faced challenges lately, she adds, it is stepping up its efforts in the battle. “It’s true that we were behind, but we’re not anymore,” she says.
There’s a growing sense among startups that Madison Avenue won’t keep them at that level. Obtaining MRC approval is a vital step, says VideoAmp’s Liguori. Still, he says. “It’s just an additional layer of security that some brands need, but it’s not essential,” and there are companies and networks that already promote business based on your company’s data. In June, Allen Media Group revealed a 10-year deal with VideoAmp that makes it the only true sponsor of the audience data it uses to make national advertising deals with advertisers at properties like The Climate Channel. A business group backed by many of the biggest traditional media companies is expected to return within weeks to unveil new “certifications” for several measurement technologies in an attempt to make Madison Avenue feel more comfortable with the new numbers.
Not everyone is willing to invest money so quickly in new applied sciences. MRC accreditation “is unquestionably essential,” says Laurie Crowley, senior vice president and group director at Havas Media. “And a lot of money and time is spent seeking” this approval. Certainly, others are working to gain support from the MRC. And Nielsen should win once again for Nielsen One.
As television networks and measurement start-ups compete for new business, it seems clear that what they rely on may be changing. More entrepreneurs are placing new emphasis not on delivering mass audience impressions for their commercials, but on tangible proof that people who saw the ads were encouraged to take action, such as visiting a car showroom or buying a movie ticket.
“The ability to deliver business impact due to media funding will start to take center stage in early storytelling,” says iSpot’s Schwartzapfel.
A+E Networks has now unveiled a new tool that analyzes search activity and brand recall around ads running across its media properties. Nielsen has partnered with EDO, a technology company co-founded by actor Edward Norton that analyzes data on consumers’ online search activity and website visits, among other activities. Understanding these dynamics, says Nielsen’s Thomas, “will help uncover” valuable insights into where ads perform best.
When the media and advertising industries attempted to diversify the industry’s foreign investment from core Nielsen measures to so-called “business scores,” they triggered a process that took at least two years to complete. Now they have one that could take much longer. Figuring out the winner will take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. The battle to capture the measurement market, says Comscore’s Bagdasarian, “is really more of a marathon.”