Future of TV Briefing: Inside the measurement issues roiling this year’s upfront market

A measurement mess

Likely one of the more contentious meetings of this year’s upfront cycle happened on June 12. That was when more than two dozen TV network executives and industry trade organization VAB sat down with Nielsen.

For the past year, some of the TV networks had been complaining about inconsistencies in Nielsen’s new “big data plus panel” measurement system compared to its legacy panel-only measurement system. But they felt like their complaints had been falling on deaf ears. So VAB — whose members include Disney, NBCUniversal and Paramount — set the meeting with Nielsen.

“The negotiative process in the upfront was being impeded by numbers that a lot of our members thought, you know, looked just flat-out wrong,” said VAB president and CEO Sean Cunningham.

“In that meeting, there was acknowledgement that there are unpredictable peaks and valleys. That’s the words that were used,” said a TV network executive.

As Digiday has reported recently, the audience size comparisons between Nielsen’s big data plus panel and its legacy panel-based measurements have been fluctuating. Not all networks are up in arms over the measurement inconsistencies. Larger TV network groups have seen the ups and downs largely cancel themselves out across channels, according to TV network and agency executives. It’s the TV network groups with relatively smaller footprints as well as those with a higher share of multicultural audiences that seem to have been most affected.

TelevisaUnivision, for example, had earlier seen a 20-30% increase in its audience when using big data plus panel, but recently that flipped to a negative delta, Cunningham said. A TelevisaUnivision spokesperson declined to comment.

“I talked to the head of sales [at a different, mid-sized TV network owner] about it, and [that person] was like, ‘That [lower audience count] will put us out of business in two years. We’ll be fucked,’” said an agency executive.

A second TV network executive put it a bit more calmly: “I don’t want to base my business on bad math.”

Nielsen’s big data plus panel will be the de facto currency serving as the basis for upfront deals this year, with its legacy panel-only measurement being deprecated as a currency option after 2025. So it’s not exactly a shocker that TV networks wouldn’t be psyched about the unfavorable comparisons. Especially since the prices set against the new currency this year will effectively set the foundation for how TV and streaming ads are priced in the upfront for years to come.

Agencies have issues too

But it’s not only TV networks taking issue with Nielsen’s decision to finally pull the trigger on the measurement currency changeover. 

In a separate meeting last month the day before the meeting between Nielsen and the TV networks, executives from major agencies and the Media Rating Council met with Nielsen about the currency changeover. They had a similar agenda to the TV networks. “Originally the intent was to put pressure on Nielsen to delay the phasing-out of panel-only,” said a second agency executive. 

“Our concerns were less about the quality of big data and more the idea that Nielsen was dictating that there could only be one currency. It was going to be this new currency before we had a chance to fully vet it and get it to a stable place,” said a third agency executive.

The agency executives do have qualms with the data quality, though. Out-of-home measurement is a sore point, and Nielsen has been delayed in reporting measurements for local TV viewership, according to agency executives.

“The local rollout of big data has happened too fast, and that has created some problems,” said the second agency executive.

“There was a lot of pushback. But Nielsen came back and said they were not changing course, and big data is going to continue to be the sole currency moving forward,” said the third agency executive.

Nielsen’s stance

Yup. Despite all the sturm und drang, Nielsen has opted to stick to its plan to deprecate its panel-only measurement this year. 

“Big Data + Panel is the best, most accurate way to measure TV. We asked and listened to our customers and the vast majority of them – and the industry – have told us that a hybrid model, consisting of Big Data and Panel, is the way forward for accurately capturing viewing. We continue to heavily invest in our panel and clients will be able to access two years worth of panel data to help guide and inform their future planning,” said a Nielsen spokesperson in an emailed statement.

That last line is worth spending some time on. It aims to address two of the main arguments that executives from TV networks and VAB made to me when reporting this piece. 

1) They said that Nielsen had not provided two years’ worth of data for TV networks to use to set baselines for the currency changeover. Nielsen says it has. 

2) They said that Nielsen will not provide panel-only data after this year for networks to use as a comparative basis against the big data plus panel measurement. Nielsen says it will. 

The second agency executive separately said that Nielsen has provided two years’ worth of impact data and that its panel-only data will be made available after this year, just not through transaction systems like Mediaocean, which – crucially – would allow that data to continue to be used as a currency going forward.

But that doesn’t make the TV networks’ arguments moot. Nielsen’s measurements that are set to be the basis of TV ad buys moving forward have been inconsistent. That two years’ of data that Nielsen has been providing? It’s the data that the networks have been saying is inconsistent and thereby unreliable.

“We’re in the market right now, and as was written by [Digiday senior media buying editor Michael Bürgi], that has stalled negotiations. Not because the buy side and the sell side are arguing with each other. Both sides are trying to deal with how do we predict the next year’s audience when we’re getting numbers over the last 12 months that are bouncing up and down with no pattern of consistency,” said the first TV network executive.

A case study in inconsistency

Case in further point: Nielsen has had issues with its household demographic assignment model – which uses Nielsen’s own and third-party data to determine the demographic makeup of households – for the 25 to 54 year-old age group. Nielsen had worked up an HDAM enhancement to address the issue. It told customers multiple times that it would be sharing the corresponding data for the month of April on July 10. On June 25, it sent a memo saying that the timing was on track. On July 8, it reiterated the plan, saying that the data would be made available in its NPower analytics tool on July 11. But in a memo sent to customers on July 10 and shared with Digiday by a person who asked to remain anonymous, Nielsen has opted not to go forward with the enhancement. 

“Nielsen does not plan to pursue an implementation of an HDAM enhancement at this time and will not be releasing the data in NPOWER. In reviewing the data, we are further convinced that HDAM is not driving significant differences in demographics between panel only and big data + panel services. Additionally, the overwhelming feedback from the industry is a need for consistency and time to plan for change — we believe it is incumbent on us to provide consistency at this point in the buying cycle and take additional time to explore future enhancements to the currency — avoiding piecemeal enhancements that will add more disruption than benefit,” Nielsen wrote in the memo.

If your eyes lost focus while reading through all that, here’s the root reason that Nielsen is not going forward with the HDAM enhancement: It would have created more inconsistency in the market. Which is not to say that a fix isn’t needed. It’s just, per Nielsen’s judgment, not the right time for it. 

Or as VAB’s Cunningham put it, “It’s essentially Nielsen saying ‘Just use the obviously suspect and partial data we already sent… while we punt on our four-time promise to provide even a month of HDAM-illuminating impact data.’”

Alternatives?

OK, soooo what about the alternative currencies? If some TV networks are so upset at Nielsen, why not uproot themselves and move en masse to adopt Comscore or iSpot or VideoAmp as their currency of choice in this year’s upfront? I mean, the three did just receive a fresh new stamp of approval from the U.S. Joint Industry Committee that counts many, though not all, major TV network owners and agency holding companies as members.

Well, for one thing, it’s not really up to them; it’s up to the agencies and advertisers. And six major agencies plus one major advertiser recently reupped their multi-year deals to use Nielsen’s big data plus panel measurement, per a Nielsen spokesperson. But for another thing, it’s not like there aren’t issues with those other measurement providers (if at this point you’ve clocked multiple uses of double-negatives in this story, that’s intentional).

“The uncertainty that we see from the data exists everywhere,” said the second agency executive. “Whichever way you go, whether it’s VideoAmp, Comscore, iSpot.” Or Nielsen.

The 2025 TV measurement landscape, everybody.

What we’ve heard

“There’s almost no middle class anymore.”

— Talent manager Paul Desisto of PD Talent on the creator economy’s middle-class crunch

The modern creator career path

Last month I went to VidCon with one question in mind: Twenty years after YouTube’s debut, what does the current career trajectory look like for creators? To answer it, I interviewed creators across the spectrum, from some up-and-comers just launching their YouTube channels to the likes of Mythical Entertainment’s Rhett & Link and Smosh’s Ian Hecox who launched theirs two decades ago. Check out the video below for what they had to say.

Numbers to know

41%: Percentage share of ad impressions that are duplicative across CTV and traditional TV.

$84 million: How much money AI video startup Moonvalley has raised from investors including Comcast and CAA.

~50%: Percentage share of most-watched streaming shows represented by Netflix, down from 80%+ in 2021.

What we’ve covered

Creator economy expansion leaves mid-tier creators behind:

• More than 1.5 million people in the U.S. work full-time as creator, up 7.5x since 2020.
• Brands are seeking out smaller, more niche creators, especially amid the economic downturn.

Read more about the creator economy here.

Esports events are putting creators center stage:

• The Esports World Cup started within the past week and has 22 sponsors.
• Spotify is one of the sponsors and has created a dedicated hub for creators to make content on-site.

Read more about esports here.

Creator marketing has the reach — CMOs want the rigor:

• Tripadvisor is having its agencies help to manage its influencer marketing.
• In the U.S., a third of marketers are spending between $1 million and $3 million each year on influencer marketing.

Read more about creator marketing here.

What we’re reading

Apple’s F1 bid:

The iPhone maker has offered to pay $150 million per year to secure U.S. streaming rights for Formula 1 races starting next year, nearly double what ESPN is currently paying, according to Puck.

YouTube’s AI slop sweep:

YouTube has updated its monetization policies to crack down on “inauthentic” videos, i.e. AI slop, creator rip-offs and other mass-produced programming designed to spam the platform for views, according to TechCrunch.

Video platforms vs. the Turing test:

Meta, TikTok and YouTube are aggressively some videos as AI-generated while allowing others that are AI-generated, including ads, to pass though without proper disclosure, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Netflix vs. YouTube:

The two streaming services have separated themselves from the pack when it comes to TV watch time and have emerged as each other’s closest rival, especially with Netflix licensing programming from YouTube creators, according to The New York Times.