In an increasingly complicated media environment, Nielsen officially announced it will be adding data from 55 million set-top boxes and smart TVs to its national TV currency, allowing it to measure addressable advertising.

The move is one of several Nielsen told customers it would be making at its national client meeting last month.

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The addition of big data to Nielsen's national TV measurement will enable critical elements of its advanced TV strategy, which also includes measurement of connected TV (CTV) apps and devices. Nielsen intends to deliver holistic, cross-media metrics across all premium video.

Nielsen will also be expanding its streaming ratings to provide daily data on a bigger group of services, including ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV and Fox’s Tubi. And it will be rolling out reports to give advertisers more information about the diversity of programming they might be sponsoring.

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More advertisers are looking to use data to target ads at specific consumers and technology is allowing distributors to address ads to individual households and devices. In order for the addressable advertising business to scale, industry executives have been looking for more granular measurement than the panel of 40,000 Nielsen families can provide.

With the additional data, Nielsen will be measuring addressable campaigns being delivered by AT&T’s DirecTV, Dish and Nielsen Advanced Advertising, plus campaigns on Vizio sets using the open addressable standard developed by the Project OAR consortium.

Nielsen expects to make preview data available in the first half of 2021. The data will show how many people in the target audience saw an ad addressed specifically to them. It will also count the remaining viewers during that commercial slot who saw a different ad delivered as part of the traditional linear feed. 

For now, Nielsen will continue to use C3 and C7, which measure the average of the commercial minutes within a program. But it has told clients it is working on delivering exact commercial ratings for each individual spot.

“As TV continues to become more digital in nature, there is greater demand for comprehensive independent measurement of reach and frequency that’s scaled across linear and advanced TV,” said Scott Brown, GM of audience measurement at Nielsen. “Addressable TV advertising can only scale if media buyers and sellers can monetize those impressions. By marrying big data with Nielsen’s high-quality panels, we can ensure all metrics are representative, accurate and trusted. This is a critical first step to help scale addressability and lay the foundation for a holistic cross media measurement system.”  

Nielsen said the new measurement system will provide more demographic and exposure measurement by incorporating the new data sources and calibrating them against its panels to correct for bias and provide more granular person level insights.

Also Read: Cable Adds a Playbook to Addressable Ad Push

DirecTV and Dish have been offering addressable advertising for some time.

“This expansion of our relationship could not come at a more important time for the industry,” said Rick Welday, executive VP and general manager, AT&T Broadband and Video. “The combination of our expertise and leadership in addressable advertising with Nielsen’s decades of experience as the backbone of TV measurement will unlock the power of National Addressable TV. It is a win for national TV networks, a win for integrity in measurement, and most importantly, a win for advertisers.”

“Nielsen has been a strategic partner of Dish Network for several years and we’re excited to expand this relationship to give advertisers and programmers the option to reliably measure addressable campaigns that leverage our data and tech stack,” said Kemal Bokhari, Dish Media general manager of data & analytics. “We continue to advocate for innovation and collaboration across the industry, and this is a great step toward that vision.”

Also Read: iSpot Measures Addressable Ads Under Project OAR Specs

Vizio and other smart TV makers have been both selling data about viewing behavior as well as selling advertising to marketers looking to reach the growing number of over-the-top streaming viewers. Vizio led the formation of Project OAR, which aims to develop open standard for addressable advertising. 

“The goal from the outset of OAR has been to help the industry rapidly evolve the technology and infrastructure to make linear advertising more responsive and relevant to the interests of the viewer while giving inventory owners and brands a better value proposition for TV on the whole,” said Adam Gaynor, VP of network partnerships and head of addressable at Vizio. “We are encouraged that Nielsen is making the investment to measure addressable advertising at scale as it will accelerate industry adoption and ultimately provide a better experience to viewers at home.”

Comscore, in what it called an industry-transforming deal, has reached an agreement with Comcast to integrate set-top-box viewing data from Comcast homes into its local and national measurement services.

Comcast has not made its consumer data available to audience research companies, limiting the accuracy, granularity and geographic coverage of set-top-box data-based ratings, which has been touted as a census-level approach to measurement. Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit has sold some advertising products that targeted viewers based on Comcast set-top data.

The deal is also a boon for Comscore, which is emerging from several years of turmoil and management following the discovery of accounting issues in its financial reporting. Last September, Comscore settled fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against the company and its former CEO Serge Matta.

“This is a game-changing moment in the history of television measurement,” said Bill Livek, who became CEO of Comscore in November.

“Comscore’s partnership with Comcast is a significant step in our transformation of television measurement, as we have built the largest viewing dataset of second-by-second viewership data that is aggregated across all premium video providers from the device, to the household, to zip, to the market and to the nation,” Livek said.

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Comscore said the Comcast data will make its audience ratings, impressions, advanced audiences and Exact Commercial Ratings products more stable and predictive. That should help its national and local clients attract more revenue from advertisers looking at more trustworthy data.

“As media costs continue to rise, advertisers and agencies are under increasing pressure to demonstrate results,” said Bret Leece, global chief data & innovation officer at Havas Media Group. “This agreement is significant because it strengthens Comscore’s already-massive scale and eliminates uncertainty around TV measurement. For Havas, this combination gives us the confidence to use Comscore as we help grow our client’s business.”

“Comscore has always had the objective to fulfill census-level measurement for TV viewing and with the addition of Comcast, they are well-positioned to deliver on their goal,” said Keith Kazerman, executive VP, digital sales, advanced advertising and research at Discovery. “Bill Livek is already making an immediate and positive impact on Comscore and the industry.

The Comcast data should be incorporated into the Comscore data by the end of the year, Livek said.

"The story is that Comcast believes in what we’re doing, how we’re changing the face of measurement for the benefit of everyone in the ecosystem,” Livek said. The data will help Comscore know what shows people watch and be able to link that to the products they consume.

Comscore’s ratings system, which is based on the big data approach, contrasts with Nielsen’s panel system, which used to base national ratings on the behavior of a few thousand Nielsen homes. Nielsen supplements its panel with set-top box data, but adjusts it based on meter reading coming out of those Nielsen homes.

Using set-top-box data has been criticized because there were some cable operators like Comcast that did not provide data, leaving gaps in national coverage that had to be mathematical models. Big data has also been criticized for under-representing non-cable and minority homes.

“Now we will have a complete view of what everyone is doing and that takes the last objection away on why people were not using us to buy. They were using us to plan [ad campaigns], but this is a gamechanger,” Livek said.

Livek said that the Comcast deal is an indication that after years of being distracted as Comscore went through an expensive and time-consuming re-audit, in the last four months, the company is on a growth trajectory.

Comscore was set to report its quarterly earnings Thursday afternoon and it was expected to report a big gain in local ratings revenue and a small gain in online measurement, which has been declining the past couple of years. In recent months, several online clients have returned to Comscore, including Buzzfeed, the PGA, Publishers Clearinghouse, Revolt Media and Accenture Digital.

“It shows that customers believe again. They’re coming back,” Livek said.

In January, Carol Hinnant was promoted to chief revenue officer, reporting to Chris Wilson, who as chief commercial officer is focused on new initiatives including the measurement of direct-to-consumer platforms.

“We realigned our sales efforts and our product efforts, which is important as we go to market,” said Livek. “The company is going in the right direction, resuming growth, focused again on our customers, improving products and doing what we believe is a transformative deal, not necessarily for Comscore, but for the industry which finally has what it’s been asking for.”

The FCC’s proposal to open cable set-top boxes to competition has thrust them into the spotlight as relates to the cost they place upon consumers and the innovation that competition from non-MVPD providers could bring.

But they are also rising in importance because of another discussion that is of perhaps greater relevance to the industry. That is the role that STBs play not as content portals, but as providers of return-path data (RPD).

From their inception, set-tops have had the potential to supply second-by-second viewing data captured passively – providing a level of granular insight into viewing behavior that was not before possible. And while not all MVPDs have made their data available, the availability of this data set from those that did has transformed audience measurement and has begun to lay the framework for audience-based buying, improved ad ROI measurement, addressable advertising services and, ultimately, scalable cross-platform measurement.

More recently, the emergence of smart TVs provided an alternative to set-tops as a source of second-by-second viewing, with some significant differences.

Unlike STBs, smart TVs can tell when a television set is on or off. STBs know only when the box itself has been turned off, not the TV. Therefore the potential exists to record content as being viewed when a set has been turned off but the STB remains on. To counter this, STB data providers use cap and edit rules that enable them to determine for specific types of content after what period of uninterrupted “viewing” the data should be cut off.

Smart TVs can also capture all television usage, including SVOD and digital games, while STBs can only measure linear television or what is passing through the box.

Smart TVs can also capture over-the-air (OTA) households, which obviously STBs cannot. While it may be a small set of viewers who have broadband Internet access but still view TV OTA, it offers a view into these households.

But while Smart TVs indeed have certain advantages for audience measurement as compared to STBs, they have shortcomings as well.

First and foremost, no Smart TV manufacturer is fully representative of the entire U.S., so there is no national footprint. And while not all MVPDs provide their STB data and therefore are not fully representative of the U.S. either, there is a large enough supply of data available from those providing data to cover perhaps 40% to 50% of the country.

STBs provide another distinct advantage in that they usually are connected to most, if not all, the television sets in a household, while at this point there is typically only one smart TV per household that has been connected to the Internet. Therefore, full household viewing behavior in these households may go uncaptured.

These comparisons and contrasts have inevitably led to the debate over which data set is of greater value to broadcasters and advertisers – RPD from STBs or from smart TVs?

But the reality is that the differences between the two types of data clearly demonstrate that their greater value lies in being complementary data sets, rather than competitive, and efforts should be made to determine how we can best combine them for a much more comprehensive and valuable approach to audience measurement.

The challenge in doing so is not insignificant and also not without concerns. The primary among these is how do we combine these data sets and protect viewer data privacy?

What would need to be done is to find some way to aggregate all viewers who have explicitly opted in to provide data, and work to have their data anonymized so that there was no way in which a user could get back to any individual viewer’s PPI. 

As has been demonstrated before with integrated data sets, a third-party provider for aggregating the data in this manner would in all probability be the best way to go.

The need for second-by-second viewing data across the spectrum of television content and collected on a scaled nationally representative basis is critical to the advancement of vital industry initiatives ranging from audience based buying to greater understanding of ROI and development of effective cross-platform measurement of both content and ads.

Set-tops and smart TVs each provide important data sets for the advancement of these objectives, but clearly they can be more effective in doing so collectively than competitively.

CIMM, under its mission of advancing cross-platform measurement, is launching an initiative to identify potential partners to combine smart TV and STB data in a manner that would protect viewer privacy while complementing the strengths and weaknesses of both methods.

We believe that through this initiative, data from MVPDs' set-tops and smart TVs, as well as data from what other STBs might come along from new providers, will work in concert together, providing a much more complete picture of national television viewing and fulfilling the promise of advanced audience measurement.

Jane Clarke is CEO and managing director of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM).

Set-top box data on viewership is becoming an increasingly important tool in programming carriage negotiations, Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit told an industry audience Thursday, adding that while it hasn’t totally swung the pendulum in favor of distributors, it has given them a new tool to determine a network’s worth.

 “What’s happening is we’re going into the conversations with much more data, and more facts and we’re better informed over the value prop of the content and that makes a big difference,” Smit said at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications conference in New York. “Good content is always something we’re going to want more of; comprehensive content and across more platforms.”

Smit stopped short of claiming that the pendulum has swung in favor of distributors over content providers, but added that as programming is spread out over several different platforms its worth can be diluted.

“As it goes out across OTT players and whatnot, it can diminish the value to us because it’s less concentrated,” Smit said.

Smit said he believes OTT isn’t going away any time soon, but said it “I think there are going to be a handful of players revolving around the space,” Smit said.  “We haven’t seen a model yet that is as profitable for us as packaging video within our footprint with HSD or phone or home security. We think the best return for our dollar is delivering within our footprint.”

While new OTT services seem to come on the scene every day – Hulu, of which Comcast is a part owner, recently announced plans for its own OTT service – Smit isn’t convinced an out-of-market play is in the cards for the operator.  

“We get the best return out of the capital we’ve already invested into the network where we pass 45 million to 55 million homes where we’re only 42% to 43% penetrated,” Smit said. “We see a lot of growth in that.”

Dish Network has agreed to provide its national and local set-top box data to Nielsen for use in the measurement company’s Total Audience strategy.

The deal comes on the heels of a similar agreement the satellite TV company reached earlier with Nielsen rival ComScore.

According to Dish, data from millions of the satellite TV service provider’s set-tops will be integrated with Nielsen panel data.

“We are aggressively investing and enhancing our local and national TV measurement business by offering clients an innovative suite of solutions that provide higher quality insights and specificity,” Nielsen chief operating officer Steve Hasker said in a statement. “Dish’s set-top-box data is the first nationwide dataset to be integrated with our panel data, reaching the perfect balance of deep viewing characteristics and the granularity of large datasets. As the global leader in audience measurement, this is another step in our efforts to integrate big data into our portfolio and our Total Audience efforts.”

The data provided by Dish will be integrated into Nielsen’s Local TV Measurement service across all 210 designated market areas. The agreement will also enable Nielsen to leverage Dish’s set-top-box data to complement many of its local and national products including Nielsen Scarborough, Nielsen Data Fusion, Nielsen Media Custom Insights, and multiple national insight services. Additionally, Nielsen will also have the ability to use set-top-box data for its suite of marketing effectiveness and return on ad sales solutions, including CPG, Retail, and Auto.

“Nielsen is the industry’s currency and adding aggregated DISH set-top-box viewership data to Nielsen’s products will enhance the granularity and clarity of the insights that Nielsen provides,” said Dish EVP of marketing, programming and media sales Warren Schlichting in a statement “This will allow advertisers and networks to improve their marketing and programming decisions even as television viewing itself becomes more fragmented.”