January 25, 2023
Nielsen, Clients React To MRC's Suspensions
- by Wayne Friedman , Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, September 2, 2021
Despite heavy Nielsen spin -- on- and off-the-record, as well as to its investors -- that accreditation of its ratings services doesn’t actually matter, the consensus among some of its biggest customers is that the credibility of its services have been tarnished by the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) suspension of …
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Wayne, I think that almost everyone---myself included----thinks that Nielsen handled the pandemic-related "undercount" badly, but this seems more like an excuse for the ad sellers to pressure Nielsen to get its act together regarding the inclusion of their digital "audiences" with its "linear" projections so they can monetize the former. This is understandable, but I think there are better ways to accomplish this rather complicated advancement than constantly berating Nielsen and issuing dire threats about "alternatives". This type of pressure only makes Nielsen more defensive, when it should be more open ---especially about how it plans to measure digital "viewing"---especially that done via smart phones.
What's lacking in all of the rhetoric is exactly what the networks as well as the agencies and advertisers want to see in an upgraded national TV rating service. Do "we" all agree that an indication of "viewing "not merely device usage is essential for both "linear TV"and digital? Do "we" all agree that an attentiveness measure is a vital addition? Most important, are all of "us"--advertisers in particular---prepared to really get involved not only with advice but with serious funding of such a new service?
Nielsen is a joke. Constantly making mistakes and every year there seems to be some big hub bub in the industry about its screw ups and nothing changes. And they are constantly rewarded by everyone who is negatively impacted by continuing to use their services.
In this day and age with the advancement of technology and phenomenal data collection, the industry is just being lazy by allowing Nielsen to monopolize ratings - unreliable ratings at that.
Joe, In Nielsen's letter to the Industry, published above, they said...
“A key decision we made at the time was to not enter panelists’ homes. This decision was designed to protect the health and safety of our panelists and employees and followed CDC and local government guidelines. The by-product hindered recruitment of new panelists and maintenance of existing panelist technology, resulting in a decrease in panel size.”
And,
“We were not as fast nor were we as transparent as we could have been in reporting issues with our panel resulting from the decision not to enter homes at the start of the pandemic.”
With that in mind, many of us in the television industry, some of whom are not paying customers, deserve to understand what actually happened?
My questions are simple ones: (perhaps you can get answers to these questions Joe)
On which date did you stop having your field force enter your panel homes? On that data, how many homes were in your panel and what was the “in-tab” percentage of these homes?
Did you install any new panel homes, during the period starting when you stopped having your field force enter homes, until now? How many?
How many homes left your panel (forced and unforced turnover) from the time you stopped having your field force enter homes until now?
When you had a technical issue in a panel home ("maintenance" is what you call it) e.g. where a piece of equipment is not working properly or when a panel home acquires a new piece of equipment, (like a new TV or a new iPad), and it needs to be wired, what did you do? And, did you take that home "out of tab during that period" How many homes were in this group?
Finally, what were the number of panel homes, and in-tab percentages, monthly, for 2020 and so far in 2021?
So sorry Wayne (I originally thought Joe wrote the piece). Apologies.