• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 5, 2019

In the latest integration of disparate media planning and buying databases, Nielsen this morning announced it is integrating Scarborough’s consumer lifestyle and product purchase data with Nielsen’s cross-media measurement platform, “Nielsen Media Impact.”

The integration is the most recent in a series of similar moves integrating databases used by advertisers and agencies to plan and buy media.

Scarborough, which historically specialized in servicing the newspaper industry, conducts annual surveys of American consumers' lifestyle, media usage and product purchasing preferences.

Like GfK’s MRI and Simmons, which conduct similar annual surveys of American consumers but historically serviced the magazine industry, the databases are leveraging their media planning hooks to create more utility for other media research databases.

GfK’s MRI-Simmons unit recently integrated MRI and Simmons in a variety of ways, including a new digital interface, Sales Catalyst, enabling new ways of segmenting consumers for advertisers, agencies and the media.

Late last week, GfK also announced an integration of MRI-Simmons with independent consumer researcher EthniFacts, and that the collaboration has created a new “Big 5 Personality Suite,” enabling agencies and marketers to:

·         identify the consumers most likely to embrace a brand

·         discover personality traits of a brand’s best consumers

·         predict potential new consumers and how to reach them

·         influence brand-consumer engagement

Nielsen Media Impact and Scarborough -- or for that matter, Simmons -- currently are not listed among the research services accredited by the Media Rating Council, but MRI is.

Nielsen describes Nielsen Media Impact as its “total media fusion national dataset,” noting that it incorporates consumer media usage estimates for TV, subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), video-on-demand( VOD), TV-connected devices, radio, “digital,” magazine, cinema and digital place-based media.

“Along with cross-media planning, Nielsen Media Impact offers reach and time spent reports as well as the ability to analyze any desired time frame, such as a week or month,” Nielsen touted in a release explaining its integration with Scarborough.

Nielsen also announced that the new integrated product already is being used by the Ad Council, the ad industry’s clearinghouse for public service ad campaigns and donated media time and space.

“The integration of Scarborough’s vast qualitative dataset into Nielsen Media Impact will add thousands of advanced segments we can utilize to optimize planning across our 40 public service campaigns,”  Anne Deo, head of analytics at the Ad Council, said in a statement, adding: “Being able to successfully reach our audiences, both effectively and efficiently, is vital to our ability to shift key societal attitudes and behaviors and, ultimately, create social change.”