Nielsen Expands Total Audience To Local TV

by Wayne Friedman , September 26, 2018

Nielsen's Total Audience expansion will now be available in all 210 local markets.

That includes its Digital Ad Ratings, Total Ad Ratings and Digital Content Ratings, measuring reach, frequency and gross rating points for ads and content across digital and TV.

Earlier this year, Nielsen added linear TV measurement from virtual multichannel video distributors (vMVPDs) into local TV ratings.

Nielsen Total Ad Ratings measures total and incremental reach for all devices, platforms, distribution and ad campaigns.

Total Ad Ratings, which will include OTT impressions in 2019, uses Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings and Nielsen TV Ratings data for obtain persons-level audiences. Now that it is available to local markets, Total Ad Ratings can reveal results from additional audiences of digital media.

Kelly Abcarian, senior vice president, product leadership, Nielsen, stated: “Local television can access the same key metrics as national television to know how their media is working.”

audience measurement, content, digital, local media, media measurement, ratings, tv

3 comments about "Nielsen Expands Total Audience To Local TV".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, September 26, 2018 at 11:36 a.m.
In many mid sized and smaller markets Nielsen's TV rating panels are so small in terms of cooperating homes that the TV numbers, themselves, are subject to question---unless used as a guide as opposed to being taken literally. This is due, in part to the stations being unable ---or unwilling ---to fund the larger panels that are needed. One wonders what the typical panel size for digital media will be in many markets?
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John Grono from GAP Research, September 26, 2018 at 6:21 p.m.

Ed, in the changing research world the methodology of research is changing. Digital leapt into server-based data and called it audience. It wasn't. It was traffic. Meanwhile researchers stuck to panels which did an OK job of measuring large sites but not small ones.

The thing is with all the RPD and connected TVs you can get a good read of the tuning (not the audience) for a chunk of the content. The trick is then to use the panel to turn that tuning data into people data. Given that you have a pretty accurate read of the total volume of tuning to digital TV, you can work with what has historically been see as small sample sizes to report on audience.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, September 26, 2018 at 6:52 p.m.

John, I agree that if all you want is an indication of total tonnage---GRPs---for a digital schedule, that a relatively small panel may be OK---providing it's not too small. This probably applies to reach estimates as well. Unfortunately, most users of Nielsen ratings---national or local---employ them much more specifically---by demos or other targeting indicators and by individual programs on the various channels---often telecast by telecast for national buys and weekly average TC audiences for local. I assume that they will expect to get the same degree of specficity with digital media and that's where the problem lies. It's not just a question of the data not being comparable, it's also a matter of panel size.

Another issue for local TV concerns the lack of average commercial minute data. This makes comparisons with digital buys --or might be buys--- even more questionable. In any event, I wish users of the new Nielsen system the best of luck---but proceed with caution folks and hopefully, Nielsen will eventually be able to upgrade its local market offerings---at least in the larger cities---so they provide something approaching the level of detail and stability we have nationally.