Nielsen will phase out the sale of its panels-only measurement solutions by the end of the year, and instead push customers toward products that marry panel measurement with data collected from opt-in consumer services and devices, according to a report published on Friday.
The report, from the Wall Street Journal, comes just two days after Nielsen received accreditation from the Media Ratings Council for its “Big Data & Panel” measurement product, which combines TV ratings data from its panels product with that collected from streaming video services, cable set-top boxes and smart TVs.
The shift will end a decades-long dependency on Nielsen products that utilized its panels solution, which involved a small sample of American households who logged their TV viewing habits and reported them back to the company. That information was used to gauge the “ratings” of TV channels and programs, and were utilized by TV stations and networks for a variety of purposes — from setting advertising rates to determining the per-subscriber price that cable and satellite companies were charged for carrying channels.
Nielsen has faced increasing competition from other measurement products sold by companies like VideoAmp and Comscore, which utilize a mixture of consumer reporting and opt-in data from connected TV platforms. At the same time, the company was criticized by some broadcasters for under-reporting audiences. In 2023, Nexstar Media Group — the largest owner-operator of local broadcast TV stations — solicited proposals from Nielsen’s competitors for alternative measurement products, calling Nielsen’s measurement “inadequate.” (The company ultimately signed an extension of its agreement with Nielsen in early 2024.) Paramount Global, the owner of CBS and MTV, dropped its agreement with Nielsen last fall.
By shifting its focus away from panels-only measurement products in favor of hybrid solutions like Big Data & Panel, Nielsen is hoping to win back business and maintain its reputation as the de facto company for TV ratings data.
“No one else pairs a high quality, representative panel with a data set this large, pulling from smart TVs and set-top boxes in more than 45 million homes,” Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao said in a statement earlier this week. “I believe Big Data & Panel gives the industry the most-accurate measurement in the history of TV. We’re grateful to our clients for helping us innovate once again.”
