Nielsen announced that its new cross-platform measurement product, Nielsen One Ads, will launch on January 11.
The announcement comes at a difficult time for Nielsen, losing its Media Rating Council accreditation for TV ratings in 2021. It directly blew the company’s reputation and wind in its competitors’ sails.
Now, Nielsen One Ads aims to provide a constant stream of accurate view measurements across linear TV, connected TV, desktop, and mobile. It will be a constant stream of data in the fullest sense, as Nielsen is moving away from minute-level measurements and into second-by-second ones.
It’s Nielsen’s opportunity to justify the title of one of the industry’s most influential measurement players and compete in a highly fragmented media landscape.
This comprehensive landscape has traditionally been difficult to track. With so many viewers across different platforms and highly varied viewing habits, Nielsen needed more than its legacy ratings model to compete.
Nielsen One Ads will feature “always on” metrics for digital campaigns to deliver second-by-second measurements. The new product will rely on Nielsen One’s proprietary ID system, data from its own devices, and perhaps even a third-party cookie alternative. Additional content metrics are expected in 2023.
With more and more marketers setting their eyes on streaming services and connected TV, capturing data on viewers requires a cross-platform approach like Nielsen One Ads. It’s an approach completely unlike traditional, linear TV measurements.
It’s still too early to say how valuable Netflix and Disney+ data will be. Currently, Netflix is already missing ad-supported viewership guarantees made to advertisers and is now refunding any unspent money.
In any case, Nielsen One Ads is gearing up for a new era of cross-platform measurements. The product will first become available in the U.S. and is an evolution of Nielsen’s measurement capabilities.
Following the decision to strip Nielsen’s accreditation for TV ratings, the company got picked up by a private-equity consortium for $16 billion. Then it underwent a massive restructuring which saw the departure of Mainak Mazumdar, a key player behind the Nielsen One platform.