• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 17, 2023

The Media Rating Council (MRC) this morning announced that it has reinstated the accreditation of Nielsen’s national TV audience-measurement service.

The move comes just before the start of the 2023-24 upfront planning and buying season, and means that as far as this year’s market of multiple currencies go, at least Nielsen’s is MRC-accredited.

It also comes 19 months after the MRC pulled Nielsen’s accreditation due to a series of “standards non-compliance issues” related to the degradation of its panel and its operations following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The MRC said the reinstatement does not include Nielsen’s “digital in TV ratings” (dTVR) component of its national TV service, or its local TV ratings service, Nielsen’s “digital ad ratings (DAR), or Nielsen’s new Nielsen One cross-media measurement service, which all remain unaccredited, although each are also in various stages of MRC audits and reviews.

"At this moment in time, we should recognize that [Nielsen] restored compliance," MRC Executive Director and CEO George Ivie said, noting that even as Nielsen's legacy ratings service gets re-accredited, "Big Data is rushing at the product this fall."

By that, he means Nielsen has begun releasing "impact data" as part of its transition to Nielsen One -- which will combine its national TV panel data with data from Big Data sources -- and many of its customers will be using that data to plan and buy or sell TV advertising based on that even if that part currently is not accredited.

"We're auditing that and that will have to be in compliance too," Ivie noted.