• by Wayne Friedman , July 21, 2020

Nielsen is changing its methodology for its digital measurement products -- including Digital Content Ratings, Total Content Ratings, Digital in TV Ratings, Digital Ad Ratings and Total Ad Ratings. In part, it's due to growing privacy consumer issues and continued pull back of third-party cookies.

The company says the changes will include establishing “media panel truth sets, census data collection technology, proprietary bias correction and calibration models and diverse third-party partner assets.”

Mainak Mazumdar, Chief Data and Research Officer at Nielsen, tells Television News Daily: “Nielsen’s ‘truth set’ is a combination of our digital and TV panels, leveraging computer and mobile universe estimates, to calibrate an array of census inputs from prominent digital platforms, as well as other publishers across the open web.”

In addition, Nielsen will incorporate a network of walled gardens and platform data providers, one with a worldwide footprint.

Nielsen will ramp up with a large roster of publishers with “scaled data, augmented with Nielsen-verified demographics, and privacy-centric audience deduplication methodologies.”

Nielsen says it is making these decisions due to big changes in the digital media business -- including decreasing use of cookies, as well as restrictions on consumer's consent of data.

The company says new efforts will help media owners better monetize platforms, optimize advertising spending and offer comparisons with media competitors. Media buyers will benefit with better cross-platform campaign delivery.

“Over the last year, we’ve been laser-focused on transitioning Nielsen to become a platform company,” stated Karthik Rao, COO of Nielsen. 

Mazumdar added: “We are creating the foundation that will allow us to continue to instill confidence, deliver comparability and enable coverage in a cookieless future.”

The new methodology will be rolled out to its clients beginning in early 2021.

This story has been updated.