What if Nielsen actually wins?
What does that mean for all the metrics upstarts? And will it even matter?
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If there’s one media industry narrative over the past few years that has felt like a sure bet, it’s this one: “Nielsen is fucked.”
After all, just look at what the big media companies say and do with regards to the researcher.
“Nielsen ratings are broken,” said ex-Nielsen Kelly Abcarian, evp, measurement and impact at NBCUniversal advertising and partnerships last April
Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav called Nielsen “antiquated” last year
The never shy NBCUs sales chief Linda Yaccarino has spoken of “liberating” the TV buying world from legacy measurement
Every big TV player has very publicly announced a deal with a TV metrics upstart - NBCU’s is working with iSpot, Paramount -VideoAmp, Disney -Samba, etc.
And this week, five of the biggest companies in TV, including TelevisaUnision and Warner Discovery just announced a new joint venture aimed at setting standards and validating data from a bunch of companies not named Nielsen
Looks pretty bad, right? Ok, but let’s look at a few things in Nielsen’s favor:
Amazon tapped the company to track Thursday Night Football
The whole TV industry is using Nielsen to track streaming growth and share data, as well as Netflix’s top shows
Everyone still seems to be paying Nielsen millions, despite all these new partners. Has anyone actually fired Nielsen yet?
This week Nielsen introduced Nielsen One Ads, a precursor to Nielsen One, which by next year should be able to provide cross-platform measurement and help brands figure out their real reach and frequency numbers.
I was having a conversation with a media executive a few weeks ago about the big themes of 2023, and he asked the question – what if Nielsen – which has gotten pounded on for decades- actually gets it right?
I spoke to Nielsen’s CEO of Audience Measurement Karthik Rao this week on my podcast. He was very frank about how tough it is to nail down measurement in 2023, and how Nielsen’s has had to change its approach fairly dramatically.
“It’s been a long journey,” said Rao. “There’s been a lot of change in the ecosystem. With the change, there is new needs, and a new level of interest and anxiety towards getting ready for the future….nobody wants to build for the future trying to retrofit to the past. That’s just the wrong way to do it. We’ve made the same mistake in the past.”
Rather than trying to use its legacy tools and methodology, Rao explained that this time around the researcher has had to integrate its tech into every partner’s various applications and make sure it can track every device. “You’re ultimately putting things inside their operating system,” he said. And it has to blend that info together set top box data, panel data, and linear TV numbers, etc. It sounds - hard.
Can I tell you that Nielsen One Ads rocks? I have no idea. But let’s think through what happens if it proves a hit.
All of these metrics upstarts - iSpot, Samba, TVision, EDO, etc, may find themselves scrambling for relevancy. Do they partner with Nielsen? Do a few of them merge? Do they need to bill themselves as complementary metrics providers, not alternatives currencies? What do they tell investors when things get rocky this year?
What happens to comScore?
If Nielsen One delivers, theoretically, will the big TV companies need to simplify their selling processes/trim their partner lists? Especially in a CFO-says-no economy?
The most interesting question, how do the networks and Nielsen make a marriage that everybody thought was headed toward divorce work? The politics will be fascinating.
Where do the tech giants fit in? Amazon, Google and others are becoming much bigger players in TV, and they don’t seem to have the same venom for Nielsen. It helps that their businesses aren’t facing secular decline. Do they have an outcome they prefer?
Ok, but here’s the counter argument - what if Nielsen One finally delivers what the industry says it wants - and nobody really wants that anymore?__________________________________Sponsor_______________________________
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For example, Hershey told Adweek that Heshey is planning to run 80% of its addressable media via private marketplace deals, including CTV. When the vast majority of your media is being spend via DSPs and SSPs, do you start to care less about ‘ratings’ and the audience size of certain shows your ads run in?
Yeah but, a brand like Hershey still cares about managing reach and frequency, which is a mess right now. If Nielsen can be the one to fix that problem, they could still be a vital player there.
Ok, but over time many brands, particularly data-centric ones, are less likely to care about traditional TV metrics, right?. At CES, Kari Marshall, VP Media, T-Mobile, spoke with palpable frustration about how much her team is accustomed to precision targeting and optimization in other media, and would like the same level of sophistication in all media. Yet at the moment, “CTV is not there,” she said.
My question is, the more brands that come to TV from digital media, the kinds of marketers that regularly use clean rooms to match up target audiences, and bring in outside data sources to refine campaigns - how much are they going to need a third party researcher that is focused on classic audience measurement?
“Everything we’ve all been doing in digital has been in some ways a dress rehearsal for this moment,” said The Trade Desk Chief Client Officer Jed Dederick on a recent episode of Next in Marketing. “The opportunity to take the most effective ad format ever…and super charge it with all the capabilities of digital.”
We seem to be a long way from there. But as CTV increasingly becomes the means that the majority of TV and TV ads are delivered, “the value of decisioning and the value of a buyer making smart decisions goes up,” he said.
Whichever company can help brands make the smartest decisions before they allocate budget, and then keep making the right decisions throughout a campaign, will be incredibly valuable.
Maybe that could be Nielsen? The irony would be rich.
Great piece!