Throughout 2022, alternative TV-measurement solutions and currencies dominated headlines, presentations and panels — with most sellers predicting, even advocating, replacing Nielsen as TV’s data foundation. While sellers believe it’s time to overhaul TV measurement, buyers are less bullish for outright change  — especially given Nielsen’s recent partnerships with major digital players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Roku.

When we talked to 200 advertisers this summer, they overwhelmingly said Nielsen will remain their primary currency for TV buys through the foreseeable future. While they agree panel data is outdated, only 46% support completely replacing Nielsen.

The reason: A fragmented measurement landscape makes a buyer’s job much harder. Of course, they want more accurate views of audiences. They simply don’t have the resources to select, test and ultimately manage multiple providers. Nor can they efficiently reconcile differences in audience counts when sellers use different currencies. 

That said, advertisers do see the value in using alternative currencies alongside Nielsen. And they believe alternative currencies will ultimately improve the TV advertising marketplace. So far, two in five advertisers that use alternatives to Nielsen find them just as effective as Nielsen, while one-third find them more effective than Nielsen. 

On average, advertisers now work with two providers and are willing to bring in a third. Among the uninitiated, more than half are open to discussion but haven’t made any inquiries.

Sellers need alternative measurement to get full value for audience delivery. With Nielsen strengthening its hold on planning, they need to advance a hybrid future. So, how do sellers get buyers to do what’s best for the business?

Define currency. Advertisers tell us they don’t fully understand the difference between alternative currency and measurement. A universal definition will help. Our survey defined currency as an agreed-upon metric, offering a guarantee that the media buyer and seller agree to use as the basis for transacting TV ad buys. 

Explain the emerging alternatives. Only 29% of advertisers consider themselves very familiar with alternative measurement approaches. Networks and providers need to explain the advantages of alternatives for specific advertisers and situations, starting with their largest accounts, which our research shows are most open to experimenting.

Demystify the methodologies. Advertisers are equally concerned with methodology and performance, and they need consistency of reporting based on robust data sets. Take the time to explain unique benefits in depth. And since every approach has blind spots, spell them out.

Provide the necessary scaffolding. Reassure buyers that alternative currencies can be used in a portion of buys and/or in parallel with Nielsen. Of the advertisers that have used an alternate measurement provider this year, most are testing and benchmarking against Nielsen. So, present exploratory opportunities that mitigate risk, and let advertisers evolve at their own pace.

Create an industry short list. Beyond individual sellers’ educational efforts, a short list of approved providers across the industry may move advertisers confidently en masse into alternate measurement and currency.

Advertisers are voting for a multi-currency world with Nielsen as the foundation. Their question isn’t whether alternate measurement and currencies can improve TV buying. It’s whether networks collectively can make buyers comfortable with a new way of doing business. ▪️

The Season 1 finale of Disney Plus' Obi-Wan Kenobi was streamed in 1.8 million U.S. households from June 22-27, a 20% uptick over February's Season 1 sign-off for fellow Star Wars Universe progeny The Book of Boba Fett.  

The numbers were provided by Samba TV, which measures streaming video consumption based on a panel of 3 million smart TV users.

The Obi-Wan finale didn't match the U.S. performance of the last Season 2 episode of The Mandalorian., which captured 2.2 million L+4D domestic streams back in December 2020, a time when the overall Disney Plus subscriber base was significantly smaller. 

But the new series, which recasts Ewan McGregor in the title role he had already played in several SWU feature films, did show that the new series is indeed able to expand the success of The Mandalorian ... something that came into doubt amid the winter's lackluster reception for Boba Fett. 

Notably, Obi-Wan Episode 6 captured 420,000 streams in Great Britain vs. just 251,000 for the S2 Mandalorian finale. It also beat out The Mandalorian in other parts of Western Europe ... albeit, again, at a time when the Disney Plus subscriber base is a little more built out. 

"Interestingly, the series finale trailed that of The Mandalorian by about 400K streams, despite its premiere outpacing The Mandalorian," said  Cole Strain, VP of measurement products at Samba TV. "The Mandalorian’s already-established fanbase likely contributed to its higher level of viewer retention, while Obi-Wan continues to build its following as a fan favorite."

The third season of Netflix's ensemble-casted fantasy-action series The Umbrella Academy got off to a solid start, ranking as the platform's No. 1 show for the week of June 20-26 with nearly 125 million streaming hours globally. 

Netflix dropped all 10 third-season episodes of the show on June 22. It's the fourth best debut week for a Netflix original show this year, trailing only limited series Inventing Anna, the second season of Bridgerton and the fourth season of Stranger Things. 

All three of those installments rank among Netflix's all-time best performers in the English-language TV series category. 

The Umbrella Academy actually unseated Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1, which had stood atop the English-language TV series chart in Netflix's Global Top 10 rankings the previous four weeks. 

Notably, Stranger Things Season 4 is no longer on pace to surpass the Korean-language smash hit Squid Game as Netflix's all-time audience champ. ST4 had accumulated nearly 930 million hours of combined streaming through its first 28 days on the platform. 

Among English-language films, hitman-themed action-comedy The Man From Toronto, which stars Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson, captured nearly 54 million streaming hours to win the English-language movie category. 

Power of the Dog, the Western-themed romance-drama from Oscar-winning writer-director Jane Campion (The Piano), garnered 27.2 million viewing hours on Netflix to finish as the No. 1 English-language film on Netflix worldwide for the week of Nov. 29 - Dec. 5.

Shot in Campion's native country, New Zealand, the film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons was also the No. 1 ranked Netflix film in America last week, unseating Halle Berry's MMA-themed directorial debut, Bruised. 

Power of the Dog debuted on Netflix on Friday. 

Program performance metrics have been scarce for the streaming business. Next TV has closely tracked Nielsen's weekly streaming rankings, which tabulate minutes viewed in the U.S. for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus. 

Since Netflix's U.S. user base of around 74 million subscribers dwarfs the SVOD competition, these Nielsen rankings of top streaming shows and movies are typically dominated by Netflix. Nielsen's numbers remain unique in that they originate from a third party. But they're always a month behind. The report due out Thursday, for example, will cover Nov. 8-14. 

Last month, however, Netflix launched a new comprehensive web portal, the Netflix Global Top 10, that's updated weekly, showing program performance for English-language and non-English-language films and TV shows, on both a global and country-by-country basis. 

For the week ending Dec. 5, the third season of Lost in Space led all English-language TV shows on Netflix's global platform, garnering 47.38 million hours of viewing worldwide. It was also the top ranked show on Netflix in the U.S., displacing last week's English-language champ, Kevin Hart limited drama series True Story. 

Among locally-produced non-English-language TV shows, the Spanish crime-thriller original series Money Heist continued to produce outsized viewership, with the five back-half episodes of Season 5, which were posted on Dec. 3, producing nearly 190 million viewing hours on the global Netflix platform last week. 

When added together, Seasons 3-5 of Money Heist have produced almost as much audience for Netflix as the platform's all-time viewership champ, Korean dark fantasy drama Squid Game. 

Finally, French comedy Spoiled Brats finished as the top Netflix non-English-language movie on Netflix for the second straight week with 26.73 million viewing hours on the platform. 

Our Previous Netflix 'Global Top 10' Summaries:

Nov. 22-28: Idris Elba Western ‘The Harder They Fall’ Shoots to No. 1 in the U.S.

Nov. 15-21: Netflix's 'Red Notice' on Pace to Become Platform's Top English-language Film Debut

Turns out American streaming audiences prefer DC comic characters over frustrated middle-school band teachers. That’s according to an updated U.S. Nielsen streaming chart tracking the week of December 21 to 27.

The updated list, which originally had Disney-Pixar’s Soul at the number one spot, now boasts Wonder Woman 1984 as the most watched show on subscription video-on-demand over the 2020 Christmas holiday week. The Warner Bros. film, which is 50 minutes longer than Soul, garnered nearly 2.3 billion minutes of streaming during its first two days of availability in the U.S. in the week ending December 27. That’s approximately 35% more viewing time than Soul, which received 1.7 billion combined minutes of Disney Plus viewing that same week.

Also Read: Disney Plus’ ‘Soul’ Ranked No. 1 for Christmas Week Streaming, Nielsen Says

Like Soul, Warner Bros.’ superhero sequel Wonder Woman 1984 made its world premiere on Dec. 25.  Problem is that the day and date debut was made on WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, which Nielsen’s new weekly SVOD ranker does not track. Only viewing on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney Plus are ranked on a weekly basis by Nielsen. 

But apparently someone over at WarnerMedia threw a fit and convinced Nielsen to estimate the Warner film’s viewing. A Nielsen rep said that Wonder Woman 1984 estimate is “a one time view as we work toward introducing the data externally.”

In a statement provided by Nielsen, HBO Max executive VP and GM Andy Forssell said, “The impact of Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max cannot be understated. As was announced on Wednesday during our earnings and as this Nielsen data shows, it was a huge holiday gift to the consumer at a time when they wanted and needed it. This partnership with Warner Bros. of course continues throughout the year but it began with Wonder Woman’s arrival on Christmas Day to great success.” 

The revised chart is now made up of five series and five feature films, which comes as a surprise since Nielsen ranks streaming content by total minutes of viewing time in the U.S. for all episodes of a series. This makes the measurement tactic more favorable to series, not one-offs. 

And there are other variables to consider.

Services with larger subscriber bases do better on Nielsen’s ranker. Netflix, which has dominated the list since it launched in September, has 73 million viewers in the U.S. while Disney Plus has approximately 40 million U.S. subscribers and HBO Max finished 2020 with approximately 17.2 million subscribers.

Runtime is another factor. At 151 minutes, WW84 was 51 minutes longer than Soul, giving the former an advantage in a metric ranking TV shows and movies by total minutes viewed.  

According to Variety, the Nielsen figure suggests that WW84 “was viewed roughly 14.9 million times…” There is no comparable figure for “Soul.”

Nielsen’s data for the rest of the Top 10 streaming for the week of Dec. 21-27 remained largely the same—everyone just moved down a notch behind WW84. The Office achieved its all-time weekly viewing minutes high, with its 192 posted episodes garnering more than 1.435 billion minutes of total watching, placing the series now in the No. 3 spot on the list for the week ending Dec. 27.

Ranking No. 4 now is the Shondra Rhimes-produced Regency-era romance drama Bridgerton, which Netflix just declared to be its most watched series over 28 initial days of viewing. 

Like every week prior, Netflix dominated the ranking list, but unlike previous weeks did not take the first or second slots.

Here's Nielsen's revised rankings for Dec. 21-27:

New York – Advertisers and ad buyers are increasingly looking to a series of metrics to track specific viewing audiences,outside of the traditional age/sex information of the past, according to a panel of measurement industry executives at the Multichannel News/B&C event, Advanced Advertising: Profiting From a Targeted Audience.

“On the buy side, they are under pressure to be more accountable in media budgets to make sure they are reaching the people they want,” said Allant executive vice president, communications, TV and media Eric Schmitt, on the panel moderated by Multichannel News editor-in-chief Mark Robichaux. He added that he believes some money is leaving television in favor of more precise alternatives that provide more granular audience definitions.

“The advertiser wants a simple segmentation that they can put into play,” Schmitt said.

While advertisers have acknowledged that they are willing to pay a premium for such information, measurement companies are facing challenges in delivering it. Part of that problem is assembling information from linear TV viewing, VOD, SVOD, online and mobile, all measured in different ways by different companies.

“It’s going to require new ways of looking at the TV marketplace,” said Rentrak president of national television Chris Wilson, adding that the idea is to take set-top box data, streaming information, and the like and combine it in a way to understand the total audience.

“A big part of this is about being able to create better decision tools for television on the foundation of television ratings,” Wilson said. “We don’t see a decline in the consumption of video; it’s actually probably going up. It’s about understanding where that consumption is taking place and being able to stitch that together and understand what that audience looks like.”

Nielsen senior vice president product leadership, national and cross-platform television audience measurement Brian Fuhrer said it is important to take information from several different sources including from traditional TV devices, set-top boxes and over the air antennas as well as which devices the  viewing is being done on, inclusing traditional TVs, computers and game consoles.

“I have seen more change in the past year than at any time in my career,” Fuhrer said. “A lot of that has to do with the content that is being delivered and the impact of subscription video on demand. It’s not just age/sex anymore, and layering on additional information is really critical.”

Turner Broadcasting Systems chief research officer Howard Shimmel added that even though all of those different aspects of viewing can be measured, the credibility of the data and truly understanding usage patterns also is a big factor.

“My wish list is a great across platform, single-source measurement.”

Jed Meyer, global director of research and analytics at Annalect, part of Omnicom Media Group, agreed. “The idea is it’s really important to know that you can duplicate [information] across platforms,” Meyer said. “The challenge is to do that in a high quality way. I think what it speaks to is the need for disruption in the research landscape. A lot of companies are tied up with one or two research vendors.”

But Shimmel added that reaching the goal of more granular measurement is going to take cooperation from all parties.

“I don’t believe one company solves this,” Shimmel said, adding that the solution is found by taking the best information from Rentrak, Nielsen, Comscore and other companies.

Schmitt warned that if advertisers don’t get the metrics they want, they will take their considerable dollars elsewhere.

"Advertisers want to buy more precise audience segments than they can today on TV," Schmitt said. “They already can online and we need to go there. We all like food, we all like to eat, but if we all go to different restaurants, buyers aren’t going to follow us."