• by Wayne Friedman , November 22, 2021

Looking to offer more precise TV commercial measures, Nielsen is launching audience estimates based on individual ads rather than commercial minutes.

The company claims Nielsen Individual Commercial Metrics will offer better comparisons across digital and linear TV platforms -- all to boost its forthcoming Nielsen One cross-platform measurement service, which will launch in the first half of 2022.

Nielsen is partnering with Extreme Reach for the new commercial measure. Extreme Reach technology allows an “efficient way” of encoding the vast majority of all national linear TV commercials with Nielsen’s watermarks.

In early 2022, Nielsen says it will improve the process for collecting and crediting watermarks, where watermarks can be detected more frequently within a given minute. This will allow commercials to have credit for shorter duration events, such as individual ads.

Nielsen says this will improve the current national TV system, C3 -- the average minute commercial ratings plus three days of time-shifted viewing. It will offer more granularity, enabling measurement on a “subminute” level.

In addition, Nielsen’s television measurement will also use its Gracenote Content Signatures, which will allow for granular crediting for instances where there is no watermark present.