Our Guide to Selecting the Best Options

For a really, really long time – like since 1950 – Nielsen Media Company monopolized the business of TV ratings. They were the first and single purveyor of data to measure how many people were watching TV and what they were watching. TV buyers and TV sellers subscribed to the same ratings measurement data, making Nielsen TV-buying currency. If “TV Show A” had double the ratings of  “TV Show B,” one could expect to pay a premium for “TV Show A.”

Now that has all changed. It’s a ratings wild west.

Just this week, Paramount announced it was eliminating its relationship with Nielsen, in favor of nascent ratings firm VideoAmp. However, in the same week, Nielsen announced a solution for measuring streaming TV content. The Wild West has everyone befuddled.

An Interview with an industry measurement guru

This week and next, I’ll share a Q&A I had with one of the industry leaders in the media measurement space, Josh Chasin, winner of the Erwin Ephron award among other accolades. (Disclosure: Chasin is an advisor for Mediastruction’s analytics practice, FutureSight.online™)

Q:  There exist at least 4 ratings providers. Can you start by explaining the unique value proposition of VideoAmp, Comscore, iSpot and Nielsen? How do we know which service to use and when for measuring TV?  Any other emerging ratings services we should be aware of?

A:  So there are three questions here.

As for what differentiates the four currency players, I’d say for Nielsen, it’s legacy status and breadth of the service line. They’d like to think their panel is a point of differentiation. But as media audiences continue to fragment, the efficacy of a panel as measurement source is declining. Comscore’s primary differentiator is their strength in the local TV marketplace. I’ve always thought that iSpot’s best asset was their commercial occurrence database, which they’ve gotten MRC-accredited. It seems like iSpot is shifting focus— especially after the 605 acquisition— back to the advertiser. This dynamic has always been their core customer. Currency may become less important to them over time. As for VideoAmp— and I should disclose that I worked there till January— I think their core differentiators are their facility with tech stack integration. Being ad tech is core to their their DNA. VideoAmp excels at getting their data every place it needs to be— and their identity spine, which is multi-sourced.

Which Option Is For Me?

As far as which service to use when, my advice to advertisers and agencies would be to make an assessment of which provider meets your needs best. How deep do you need to go in local markets? Is attribution from a currency provider important? What about advanced targets? Do you want to activate against first party data? If so, who does the best job of operationalizing your data as a media target? Ideally, you can land on one or maybe two providers that best meet your needs.

As for emerging ratings services, there are companies on the periphery of currency measurement that are worth knowing about. I don’t think anyone else will be joining the ranks of currency competitors in the near future. Samba, which provides ACR data, isn’t competing in the currency space. But Samba goes pretty deep on streaming data. TVision and HyphaMetrics are both panel companies. TVision has a panel originally built to measure attentiveness, but which a couple of the currency providers use for calibration and personification. This translates household-level data to persons-level data. HyphaMetrics has some very innovative metering technology, and has announced a panel build with Samba (likely in the Samba footprint.) These panel companies, and perhaps one more about to enter the US market, are useful tools to refine the ratings offerings derived from big data.

How will fragmentation effect the way we buy TV?

Q: In what ways do you see the fragmentation of ratings services in the marketplace impacting the way media agencies buy broadcast media? I’m thinking of things like posting. Is that now dead if buy and sell side have different currencies?

A: Historically, when there have been multiple competing ratings services, the winner is determined by which one the buy side embraces. I don’t expect us to get down to one cross-platform video currency. However, I think we may see a market where there are two strong players. There is a school of thought that there can only be one currency in a market, but I dispute this. You and I could make a deal using dollars, or Euros, or crypto— as long as we’re both using the same currency, we can transact. I think that’s the key here. As long as both parties in the transaction use the same currency, you can negotiate, transact, and post. But I think it will be in the best interests of the buy side to align around one or two currencies, which should drive the sellers to that one or two.

Next week I’ll continue the conversation with Josh. So much to learn here.