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

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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.”