• by Alex Weprin , February 6, 2018

Nielsen on Tuesday rolled out Nielsen Brand Integration Intel, which measures and evaluates brand exposures on linear TV, subscription video-on-demand platforms, and short-form video on sites like YouTube.

Nielsen says its new product will “enable networks and marketers to effectively research within an ecosystem that provides qualitative, apples-to-apples comparisons” across the platforms it is measuring.

It works like this: Nielsen accounts for the length of time a brand is onscreen, where it is onscreen and in the program, how big or prominent the branding is, as well as the “impact” of the integration. It will then create a score based on that data, placing a value on the integration at an individual and an aggregated level.

Nielsen says that last season there were 611 brands doing on-screen integrations, up from 574 during the 2013-2014 TV season.

While branded integrations have long been a staple of TV programming, they have become particularly prominent in streaming shows on platforms that do not have traditional commercials, like Netflix and Amazon. In addition, YouTube, with its dominant position as the top free video streamer, has become a place where marketers are regularly looking for ways to break through to viewers.

“Younger viewers particularly grew up in a world where they have been inundated with brands from every side,” Branded Entertainment Network CEO Gary Shenk told Digital News Daily in a recent interview. “If you show a world that does not include those brands, the world looks unrealistic.”