Commentary

Inputs Vs. Outputs, And Nielsen's New 'Outcomes Marketplace'

More than a century after Arthur C. Nielsen launched a company to measure media exposure to consumers -- and increasingly, how it affects them -- his namesake company is once again elevating the role of outputs in its products and services to advertisers, launching what it is dubbing an "Outcomes Marketplace" that will combine Nielsen's proprietary data with those of other marketing and media researchers to offer advertisers and agencies with "a more comprehensive view of an ad’s outcome alongside reach and frequency data."

The move obviously has implications for media planners and buyers, as well as their clients, but it also raises new questions about what the inputs and outputs of media measurement actually are.

The move comes a week after a former division of private equity-owned Nielsen that explicitly measured outputs like sales lift and conversions -- Nielsen IQ, now NIQ -- began trading as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange, reminding me of a long history of the companies' split-ups, reintegrations, private and public offerings over the century of their existence.

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Company historical footnotes aside, Nielsen's announcement this morning raises additional questions about what media measurement inputs are vs. outcomes, announcing that its first third-party Outcomes Marketplace partner is Realeyes, a company known for measuring the attention consumers pay to media and advertising.

In the brief modern history of ad industry outcomes measurement standards -- the Media Rating Council's September 2022 "Outcomes and Data Quality Standards," attention metrics are not listed as "measurement of delivery and exposure," not outcomes, which the MRC standards describe as things like lead generation, requests for information, sales lift, brand lift, conversions, etc.

To that end, Nielsen executives say the outcome measurement portion of the Realeyes partnership will come from pairing Realeyes' data with Nielsen's own, proprietary snapshots of brand and sales outcomes metrics in the marketplace.

What's not clear from this morning's announcement is whether future Outcomes Marketplace offerings will be generating outcome metrics solely from Nielsen's data, or from the other third parties it is partnering with.

Nielsen has not disclosed other Outcome Marketplace partner plans, but its announcement this morning does include a quote from Krishna Subramanian, the CEO of influencer marketing platform Captiv8, which big agency holding company Publicis acquired earlier this year.

"Nielsen’s attention metrics raise the bar for influencer marketing," Subramanian says, adding, "We’ve always pushed for deeper, more meaningful measurement and now we can go beyond surface-level metrics to show real campaign impact."

Nielsen's move also comes as big agency holding companies like Omnicom, WPP, Publicis and others have been investing deeply in their own, proprietary outcomes-based measurement data, especially Omnicom's big acquisition of Flywheel a couple of years ago, indicating that from their point-of-view, the future of planning and buying is more about owning elite outcome data sets than licensing it from others.

That said, Nielsen says its new Outcomes Marketplace will "announce more best in class outcomes measurement providers later this year that will deliver metrics across the full spectrum of campaign performance, including ad engagement, audience attention, brand perception shifts, and sales conversions."

I look forward to covering those, as well as any new outcomes measurement deals, products and services coming from other industry suppliers. Maybe even NIQ?

3 comments about "Inputs Vs. Outputs, And Nielsen's New 'Outcomes Marketplace'".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, July 31, 2025 at 1:46 p.m.

    Joe, in the past various efforts have been made using UPC scanner panels and subset panels of same  measuring TV set usage--to try to determine whether there are any differences in "outcomes" based on correlating TV set usage "impressions" and, sometimes "reach", with sales lifts. While these invariably show some general connection--advertisg works--- whenever they try to see if using prime time is better than a mix of daytime and lste evening, for example, that very few consistant patterns emergs. Which is not surprising as they ar3en't measuring who in these homes was watching, let alone whetther the consum er--even when "watching" the program--- also watched the commercial. When they try to go indeeper--like show by show or network by network  by daypart, they run into the same problem, often compounded by sample size issues. 

    In orher words, I doubt tht this has any great significance re how TV ratings are measured nor how time buyer and sellers interact--especially for the upfront, where there is no real audience data to form a starting point. It's more a media mix modelling thing.

  2. Jack Wakshlag from Media Strategy, Research & Analytics, July 31, 2025 at 4:45 p.m.

    What clients want are sales lifts and persons data. That is need to know. The rest is nice to know, but rarely paid for. 

  3. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 1, 2025 at 10:41 a.m.

    Jack, the media mix modellers operate on a purely theoretical level, they are not attempting to determine what  networks a buyer  negotiates with,  waht shows to buy time in or what currency to use, etc. It's all about trying to statistically find the ompimal media mix, whether its TV or prinjt or digital and how much, in what sequential mix, etc to produce a hoped for sales result..That's way beyond a TV seller's and buyer's pay grade. And there's no way to apply it to TV time buying--only media planning----providing the model makes sense and the client is willing to abandon many sacred cows--like prime time TV, sports, etc. If Nielsen, somehow, started producing sales lift data for every TV show and every seller, plus attentiveness data per commercial, its main clients--the TV time sellers ----would land on it like a ton of bricks. But this poses no threat to their penhacnt for big numbers because it's not about time buying

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