Tagging your ad and getting verified delivery (and duration) is about as good as you can get at the moment.   Attempts can be made to estimate or impute the profile and demographics, but I'd initially focus on selecting the sites that the ad will be viewed on.

I sometimes think that more thought goes into the acronym than the actual legislation.

I hear you Cory.

Laurie, I have talked to many in the ad industry that have the same concerns about cookies. I point to the fact that many Fortunes are turning to sweepstakes and contest as a very valid answer for data. The sweep count is up over 25 percent. Why because a good sweepstakes campaign can produce a far greater amount of data than any cookie could ever produce.  I have worked directly with several of the large ad agencies like WPP but many more, ignore this source of data including Dentsu, Merkle. Further, not only do your clients get real time information from a sweepstakes entry, you get the link in Search for free, you get the brand awareness, and social media ties to your brand. The real problem? The big agencies are blind and overly compartmentalized within their own agencies. I had one major Fortune client’s manager who I dealt with on sweeps, but didn’t even know who were the other managers who were running 3 other sweeps at the same time. The senior marketing VP’s don’t even know in many cases who is working on what. They are only looking at the sweep sign ups as their means of determining success. Forget the right hand know what the left hand is doing. It’s more like either hand can’t find their own face in the big agencies. The answer? The saying KISS still works well. 

Jack, that's what I said--- leading local newspapers, which often also owned radio stations in the same markets. As for independents In New York, you had WABD---channel 5---which was the linchpin of the ill-fated Dumont TV network---they also had an indie in Washington. And WPIX, the leading NY indie, was owned by the Tribune syndicate. That's why the FCC, after allowing about 95 stations to go on the air instituted a freeze on new stations as it was concerned about potentially monopolistic control of news content if newspapers, radio and TV outlets were owned by the same companies in so many markets. The freeze, which lasted about two years gave the FCC time to figure out a better allocation method but it also placed ABC in a precarious position as most of the stations that got the early start---- the few indies excluded---were primary CBS or NBC affiliates---in addition to the O&Os. As a result, ABC sponsors had to put up with very poor station lineups for their shows for about 3-5 years--until the mid-late 1950s. And ABC was mired in third place in the ratings on most evenings until it  launched "Disneyland" in the 1954-55 season. It's all in my book---"TV Now and Then", 2015, Media Dynamics Inc.

To be fair, Ed, apart from O&Os, many  TV stations were owned by local newspaper interests and radio broadcasters  and not news conglomerates. That was later.  In NY you had three VHF indies, who owned them?  And as local broadcasters, they had to do what little was required to keep a license.

Much of what is offered here is about cable news programming and hopefully someday online too.  If advertisers use this to create a whitelist of safe entities, you and I both support this idea.  

Yeah, true.
Most folks know, news viewers or not, ya can't have a hero if you don't first have a villain. 
And Trump is justifiably the world's biggest news villain. Because no one shouts loud hatred for our two-party democracy, government, justice and equality more than him.
So his loud disruptive force, in the form of anger, hatred, revenge, racism, mockery and violence, is the pounding at the proverbial news door.
Conflict drives drama, and drama drives ratings. We all watch a villain, as long as he doesn't rule.

Wayne, YouTube isn't going to make much headway with TV branding advertisers until it gets  lots of content of comparable quality to what the  TV networks and cable channels offer and until it can place 15- and 30- second commercials in situations where they not only run from start to finish but are also seen at least to the same extent as on "linear TV". Presenting lots of old Sfi-Fi Channel movies is a first step in this direction as well as other films that now carry ads---but this is only a start. I use an ad blocker so when I watch one of these ad-carrying movies I see no commercials. How many other "viewers" do the same thing? And you can't rely only on movies---what about other types of professionally produced fare---dramas, sitcoms, reality, newsmags,game shows, etc.

Anyway you figure it,  YouTube will have to use Nielsen to verify its audience delivery as I doubt that many branding advertisers  will accept its first party data. And selling TV branding advertisers will require experienced TV sales types with good connections to the time buying community as well as skilled packagers, researchers, etc. All of that will take time and lots of effort---we're not talking programmatic here.

and the world is a better place.

If agencies agree to streaming makegoods for tv underdelivery, advertisers would be replacing third party Nielsen TV metrics with first and second party self-graded metrics from Comcast. Not ideal, but as we've noted, there's a double standard for acceptance of digital video measurement.

Joe, I believe this poll has as much value as Hunter Biden's blow paintings are worth $500,000.  Surveys are as good as the questions ask.  

Thanks Joe.   Great to see that corroborative data, and apologies for my ignorance.   From afar the US appears to be red or blue - but the data shows that 'pink' is the dominant political non-affiliation.   I'll be bookmarking that link!

Very interesting Wayne.

There could be a twist in this over the long run.   A human trait is that we value scarcity.   The diamond market is an example.   Lithium is headed that way.

Video is the most powerful way to present your brand.  It also delivers mass audiences in '30-second' blocks - small bites but with a big bang (if your cvreative and placement is good).

So as people shy away from ad-supported video at a macro level, does that make the remaining advertising based video delivery systems audience (let's call it linear broadcast TV) even scarcer ... and maybe even more valuable?    Brand advertisers already pay huge amounts for Superbowl spots.   If the ad-load reduces within a programme could that make the ad environment more acceptable and watched (e.g. 5 x 30-second breaks in a one hour programme) with a higher rate and CPM?

Just shooting the breeze, but may be worth cogitating over.

@John Grono: the sample composition correlates to the actual percentages of American voter party affiliation:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

Interesting Joe.

They "surveyed 1,300 Americans to understand their perceptions..." and came up with n=545 Democrats, and n=335 Republicans.

First, one wonders who the remaining n=420 who aren't Democrat or Republican. vote for   Second, the numbers doesn't seem to reflect the 2020 Presidential election result in which Biden received 51.3% of the votes, Trump received 46.8%, and "Others" received 1.9% of the votes.   Maybe the other n=420 reflect the one-third who didn't vote.

I understand the sentiment but I just don't get the robustness of the numbers.

Very true Ed.

The average minute audience of 19.8m people may have been calculated over a lengthy session (I think we run something like six sessions across the day here) so the reach across that session may have been significantly higher.   Then if you meld the sessions together into an 'all day' number generally the average minute audience decreases, but the daily reach increases.   This pattern then holds when you add the next day.

So, yes Ed, when the Olympics are completed a compendium of session, daily and total event data (average minute audience, daily peaks and nett reach) would tell the complete story.

While 19.8 million average commercial minute "viewers" may seem like a lot it represents only 6-7% of the total popuation.And how many of these watched the average commercial---40%--45%? What would be more interesting---when the data becomes available---would be the total cummulative reach of the Olympics---including those who zapped the commercials, with breakdowns of time spent groups as well as the percentage who zapped ads every time they tuned in or played the event on a DVR. Somehow, I doubt that such figures will be released---but I could be wrong.

Wayne, I'm not so sure that Netflix is competing directly with many of the ad-supported streaming services---especially those fielded by the TV networks and large cable players. The latter two operate on a totally different business plan and have access to tons of program content---added to daily-- that is aired on their "linear TV" platforms---with most of their program costs already amortized by "linear" ad dollars. Netflix doesn't have this huge advantage. Also, it is not a given that a TV network/cable originated AVOD service must compete with Netflix in the sense that whoever gets the most subscribers "wins" while failure to do so is a "loss". The most likely scenario is that Netflix will---as a result of an over-crowded streaming service space---- begin to level off or lose subscribers at a faster rate than it acquires new ones. At the same time, it will probably develop that a typical TV network/cable AVOD service can be profitable at half of the subscriber levels that Netflix attains----because of the combined ad plus subscriber incomes as well as the huge amount of already paid for content in their libraries.

Regarding ad clutter loads, early indications from TVision seem to be telling us that the low ad clutter rates on AVOD do not appear to translate into significantly higher  across-the- board  ad attentiveness levels---compared to "linear TV". In other words high levels of ad clutter may not be an issue. Once the dust settles down,  I expect to see a progressive---but significant---- increase in AVOD ad clutter levels which will produce  major hikes in ad incomes as the sellers are going to continue to demand---and get ----higher CPMs than they earn from "linear TV" while, at the same time, progressively hiking their "linear TV" base CPMs as was just done in the recent upfront.

Just to clarify, I realize that the last quarter's audience estimates were also provided in the article, but I believe that a more extensive trend analysis is also needed---like the last two quarters at the minimum.

Wayne---a suggestion. A lot of people who read articles like this mistake the information as indicating a continuing decline---like month to month in the current year---as opposed to what you are actually saying, namely that the data are being compared to the same month last year. The solution---which minimizes such confusion---is to also note the year-to-date figures. If these also show the same percentage deline---that means that the latest month's ratings were not down more than what has been seen this year; if, on the other hand, the latest month's declines are greater than the recent year-to-date trend, that's a really significant point. The year-to-date figures should be readily available to any Nielsen subscriber.

This is great news and a long time coming for atheletes in a multi-billion dollar industry. It will be interesting to see how far reaching the collaborations become and how smaller companies take advantage of this incredible opportunity to create new awareness for their products.

Lots of odd statements in this one. local TV stations used to be owned by local business people but now they are run by hedge funds and corporations. Huh! Originally most stations were owed by newspaper interests and/or the TV networks in the larger cities. And TV news was always a  business venture---not just a public service. Time buyers use psychographics to make TV news buys and go with what works for them----really? Most TV news buys are driven by the older age skews of the audience or by a desire to be associated with news content. The audience "currency" is adults aged 25-54---even though the vast majority of the viewers are over 50---absurd---but it's  not psychographics. Many TV "news " shows have become opinion shows but their audiences haven't noticed the change from straight news to opinion. Really?

Anyway, despite this kind of babbling, I do wish these folks the best and hope that they are able to provide  fair and balanced monitoring of the various TV news shows as well as news provided by other media.

Oops wasn't right back then.