Nielsen Evolves with Ever-Changing TV Landscape

TV audience-measurement company Nielsen is now including detailed viewership data from YouTubeTV in the local TV-audience measurement data it provides to media companies and advertisers.

“By including YouTube TV in our local ratings…we’ve enabled programmers and advertisers across these local DMAs to gain a more comprehensive view of audiences engaging with linear TV programming across digital platforms,” Nielsen said. To measure local viewing, the company developed DMA [Designated Market Area] regions that “group counties that form common local TV markets.” There are currently 210 such regions across the U.S.

The move is the latest evolution of the Digital in TV Ratings (DTVR) program Nielsen launched in 2015 to account for TV viewing on PCs, tablets, and smartphones. When these viewers watch a live or time-shifted program at a national or local level, Nielsen is now able to count that viewing in the program’s standard TV ratings.

Launched just over a year ago, YouTubeTV is a subscription service that delivers content from more than 60 networks, — including live TV from ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC — for $40/month.

As part of its efforts to track the rapidly evolving TV landscape, Nielsen also recently introduced a “next generation” web-based analytics platform that tracks smart TV viewership in real time. Dubbed Nielsen Grabix, the tool gives TV programmers and advertisers “unprecedented and instant visibility” into viewership trends for the top 56 U.S. TV markets and 400 local stations and national networks.

The updated platform makes it possible to analyze audiences by zip code, identify when an audience tunes in and tunes out, and measure the number of mentions a particular program or segment of that program receives.

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