It’s a bizarre time to be a TV advertiser.
Till roughly two years in the past (and regardless of dissatisfied grumblings amongst most broadcasters), Nielsen was just about the one present on the town when it got here to TV measurement.
Now, panels really feel passé, programmers are actively testing various currencies, a joint business committee of competing broadcasters is working collectively on requirements for cross-platform measurement – and Nielsen, as soon as the final phrase in TV forex, is on its again foot.
Life comes at you quick.
However there’s nonetheless an extended strategy to go earlier than TV measurement is a solved drawback – if it ever even is, stated Dan Aversano, SVP of information, analytics and superior promoting at TelevisaUnivision, talking at a Cynopsis occasion in New York earlier this week.
“Don’t low cost how slowly we transfer as an business,” Aversano stated. “Whether or not we prefer it or not, there’s a actuality to that.”
A troublesome row to hoe
Though turning a giant ship takes time, there’s an urge for food for innovation on each the purchase and promote sides.
Advertisers are embracing programmatic shopping for, together with on the upfronts, and huge broadcasters are making progress with their alt forex pilots. NBCU, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount are all testing Nielsen options.
And it’s been a very long time since there was this a lot motion within the TV measurement area.
“We haven’t had actual change in measurement or forex – I can’t even bear in mind when it was,” quipped Stacey Stewart, US chief advertising and marketing officer at UM Worldwide. “I feel it was the C3 metric within the early 2000s.”
C3 is a panel-based transactional metric Nielsen launched in 2007 to measure the typical viewership for each stay commercials and time shifted and on-demand viewing over the course of three days after a linear broadcast.
In late 2020, Nielsen introduced plans to exchange C3 and C7, which measures common business viewership over the course of every week, by the second half of 2024 with Nielsen One, its new cross-media measurement resolution.
However, to Aversano’s level, the mills of the gods (or, on this case, the incumbents) do grind slowly.
‘Placing all this sh*t collectively’
For instance, regardless of saying that it could launch a forex combining each massive information and conventional panel measurement in time for this 12 months’s upfronts, Nielsen backtracked with just some weeks to spare earlier than upfront negotiations started final month.
Though Nielsen did just lately regain its Media Score Council accreditation for nationwide TV rankings, which it misplaced on account of undercounting viewership through the pandemic, its reaccreditation doesn’t cowl massive information like automated content material recognition (ACR) and viewership from set-top containers. (Not that the JIC is prioritizing accreditation … )
Some entities, together with the Video Promoting Bureau, imagine Nielsen’s delay will decelerate the corporate’s progress on Nielsen One (which Nielsen denies).
In the meantime, Nielsen launched an information clear room with Snowflake this week to share first-party information with purchasers.
Whereas all this drama performs out, it’s as much as consumers and broadcasters to check new metrics and currencies to see what works and be taught from what doesn’t.
“You don’t wish to choose one factor too shortly,” Stewart stated. “You wish to be sure that the path you’re heading in is futureproof and scalable and that you simply’re rising with the panorama because it modifications.”
It’s additionally necessary to comprehend there isn’t going to be one single decision to the measurement debate. The TV market will most probably find yourself with a hybrid mannequin that features every thing from ACR and massive information by way of good TVs to, sure, much-maligned Nielsen-style panels.
“Name me a dinosaur, however panels serve a objective,” Aversano stated. “It’s placing all this shit collectively that’s going to unravel this drawback.”
