Nielsen To Start Local TV Impressions Metric Measure In January 2022
- by Wayne Friedman , September 21, 2021
Nielsen will transition to impressions-based reporting -- for local U.S. TV station advertising buying and selling -- from older TV ratings measures, starting in January 2022.
This will come at the same time as the integration of broadband-only homes into Nielsen local TV measurement.
Previously, Nielsen said broadband-only (BBO) homes …
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Wayne, it's simply a trade-off which will make Nielsen's station clients happy as a salve against including BB - only homes which are normally light TV users. So the stations "gain" a little with "impressions"---which is not a measurement but a projection of GRP findings when GRPs are carried out to decimal points, not rounded off to a whole percent. And the stations will lose a little as light viewing BB-only homes become part of the rating usiverse---as they should be.
As for "impressions" being a great "equalizer" across platforms, that's nonsense. How does one compare a national TV "impression"---based on average commercil minute "audience" when viewers who zapped the ads are deleted with local market average quarter hour TV "impressions" ---- not to be confused with commercial minute----which do not delete audiences who zap commercials. And then we have digital "page views"---meaning that the ad message appeared on-screen for two or more seconds for a video message---if the IAB's definition of "exposure" is used. Is that the same as local market or national TV "impressions"? I think not.
There needs to be a series of protocols as to which media metrics can be 'co-mingled' and which can't.
For example, impressions and audience can't be co-mingled. It would be akin to having $1 USD, and two trillion (2,000,000,000,000) Venuzuelan Bolivars, putting them together you mathematically have 2,000,000,000,001 ... but in reality you only have $2 USD.