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Commentary
What Nielsen MRC Accreditation Hiatus Means for Advertisers - Not Much
- by Lisa Niemeyer , Op-Ed Contributor, August 24, 2021
Recently, Nielsen Media Research voluntarily put the Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation of its Nielsen National Television ratings service on hiatus until further notice.
This move followed a review instigated by the sell-side that found viewers were undercounted in February by as much as 6% for 18-49 viewers, as well …
2 comments about "What Nielsen MRC Accreditation Hiatus Means for Advertisers - Not Much".
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Excellent piece, Lisa, I couldn't agree more. Too many people in the media business confuse MRC accreditation with a certification of survey accuracy---which is simply not true. It's mainly a matter of seeing to it that the researcher does what he/she says it's doing and, of course, that it's following accepted research practices about weighting and other matters. Which is a good thing---but hardly the whole ball game. Until the advertisers, who never tire of complaining about the ills of audience measurement start putting significant amounts of money and personnel involvement on the table, little will change as the ad sellers account for 75-80% of Nielsen's TV rating income and they march to a different drummer than the time buyers.
Great piece. The question is whether there's willingness in the market to take a bold first step and move to another currency provider, like 605. It's all about doing the necessary work to prepare- posting historical schedules so you understand the CPM differences, altering selling estimates to reflect the new data source. I think the market would find it's worth the effort, any of these new data sources will provide far greater stability than Nielsen does now.