MRC Accredits Comscore For Both National And Local TV Ratings

by Joe Mandese , March 20, 2024

The Media Rating Council (MRC) has granted accreditation to Comscore for household and average audience estimates for both its national and local TV audience measurement services.

The move makes Comscore the only local TV audience measurement service accredited by the MRC, following the council's decision to suspend accreditation of both Nielsen's local and national services in 2021.

It also makes Comscore the only "alternative currency" currently accredited for national TV audience measurement utilizing a "Big Data" methodology.

The MRC re-accredited Nielsen's panel-based national TV service in April 2023.

iSpot.tv currently is accredited for TV occurrence data only.

Comscore noted that it also marks the first time any TV audience-measurement provider has been accredited in all 210 measured local markets based on device-tuning measurement.

Comscore's accreditation comes as big advertisers and agencies are planning their 2024-25 upfront TV buying strategies, although many so far have indicated they plan to stick primarily with Nielsen's unaccredited service for continuity reasons and to supplement with enhanced audience-measurement deals utilizing alternative currencies.

alternate currencies, audience measurement, big data, comscore, currencies, local media, media measurement, ratings, television, upfront

5 comments about "MRC Accredits Comscore For Both National And Local TV Ratings".

Check to receive email when comments are posted.

Andy Berman from Scale Marketing, March 20, 2024 at 12:42 p.m.
Wondering why you didn't mention that the local accreditation is only on household data, not age/sex data. Considering Comscore uses the "homes with" methodology which is different from Nielsen, I think it's an important distinction.
Reply

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 20, 2024 at 2:07 p.m.

It's a huge distinction, Andy. If Comscore sticks to set usage---aka household audience---reporting, that's fine for those who wish to use stats circa 1955 media. But if they assume that if a home has a resident male aged 25-54 that said male is watching every time his household has a set tuned in---then there's a big problem. Question for anyone at Comscore: Do you provide viewer estimates based on household resident composition? If not, please feel free to clarify.

Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., March 20, 2024 at 4:58 p.m.

@Andy Berman: This is what we reported: "for household and average audience estimates for both its national and local TV audience measurement services.*

John Grono from GAP Research, March 21, 2024 at 8:38 p.m.

Ed and Andy ... does it mean that MRC has accredited what is basically a 'tuning' measurement?

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 22, 2024 at 10:56 a.m.

John, MRC does not determine whether the measurement is giving an accurate picture---so it doesn't matter whether it's only set usage--as in an ACR home panel--- or, in the case of Nielsen's new system, mostly big data set usage with viewers-per-set factors applied from a very small but sepatate panel. All they do is audit the service's measurements and related matters to ensure that they are doing what they claim and meeting basic research and statistical tabulating/weighting guidelines. Remember that for years radio diaries were monitored in the same manner as were PPM, when later adopted---yet the two meaurements produced radically different fidings. The same was true in magazine audience research. For decades we had two totally different methodologies audited---"through-the-book" and "recent reading" yet the latter generated "readership" estimates that were 50-100% higher.