Then you need a panel because census data and big data is messy and noisy and has a lot of issues and gaps in it. It’s also machine data. It’s telling you that this machine had something going on, not who was using that machine or watching that screen, and that’s really what marketers care about. The third reason is to be representative because big data sets have their biases and may not represent people of all demographics, race, ethnicity, or income.
So, how has the rollout gone?
We have been working on bringing big data into our national and our local TV measurement for some time. On the national front, we’ve been working on this for a couple of years now in partnership with our clients. We started putting out impact data over two years ago, and at that time, it consisted of four providers: Dish, DirecTV, Vizio, and Roku. This year, we continue to produce data, but also include Comcast. So we now have five data providers over 100 million devices—huge scale coverage. We believe this is the best way to measure, and that’s why we’re pushing this direction.
We’ve made the big data+ panel data stream available for transactions since last year because many clients were ready to move forward and use that—because it did a better job for finding their audiences—and we continue to do so.
How does this affect the upcoming TV upfront?
As we head into the 2025-26 upfront, it is a really exciting time because clients have now had the data for multiple years in their hands. They’ve got a chance to get familiar with it. It is still different—and change is very hard—but there’s been some time, and we’ve spent a lot of time trying to work with clients to help them prepare for this change.
Bringing big data into our traditional television measurement is a really important step for being able to do advanced audience measurement across traditional television as well as streaming and other forms of digital, and that’s what we have available today in our Nielsen One Ads measurement.
That’s all about national, and just to touch on the local front as well, we’re very excited that we’re bringing Comcast into our measurement and making that available for action beginning in January 2025, and that’s an important step for all the same reasons as with national. It provides greater stability. It provides coverage of the long tail and better measurement across the local markets.
