The Evolution of Media Measurement?

Audience fragmentation is accelerating and media measurement has had trouble keeping up the pace for some time. Due to technology and tracking difficulties, creating one measurement source that gives a full picture of share of time spent with media is a long way off and may never come to fruition on a one-to-one basis. However, individual media types (namely video and out-of-home) have made strides over the last few years to implement improvements in cross-platform user tracking and consumer identification.

In the absence of total day, cross-platform and cross-tactic consumer tracking, it is hoped that new measurement features offered by mainstays in the research industry will alleviate some of the strategic planning pain points that currently exist in total audience plan development. Nielsen has been working on major enhancements to their TV ratings and digital measurement sources like comScore are now challenging traditional research sources to more comprehensively cover video viewing via traditional and digital sources. In the out-of-home (OOH) world, the old Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB) has undergone a rebranding to become “Geopath.” With this rebranding, it be making efforts to bring the group’s OOH measurement capabilities on par with its media contemporaries in the video space. Given these recent changes, it is necessary for all marketers to understand where the industry currently stands with the latest crop of updates, and what lies ahead.

Nielsen’s local TV enhancements

Long-lamented but begrudgingly accepted as the best (and typically, the only) measurement standard for video viewership, the Nielsen diary has had a long life. While the diary was sufficient for the dawn of the television era, it has not sufficed as a reliable measurement source for some time. In today’s increasingly complex media consumption landscape, consumers cannot be expected to accurately track all of their TV viewing in a paper booklet. With the myriad of video choices available to consumers and technological advancements allowing for digital tracking, a replacement for the unreliable diary is long overdue.

Certainly Nielsen has made some strides toward evolving diaries in the last few years by introducing set-top meters to supplement diary data in mid-size markets and by adding local people meters (LPMs) to passively record all viewing on TV sets in large markets. In addition, Nielsen’s acquisition of Arbitron and their personal people meter (PPM) technology gave the industry new hope for more accuracy in TV ratings, since the PPM is designed to pick up encoded audio signals. Applying this technology to signals from TV broadcasts adds another layer of accuracy in addition to traditional video set-top tracking.

But PPMs have not been applied to TV measurement thus far, LPMs (currently the most accurate viewing measurement) are the standard in just the largest U.S. markets and set-top meters only serve to enhance diary data through algorithm modeling without actually replacing self-reported viewing in mid-size markets. So Nielsen’s recent advancements have improved accuracy in only a handful of markets to date, but that’s all about to change.

The current timetable at Nielsen is to retire all diaries by the end of November 2017, making December 2017 the first month of live data for currency in any diary-only market. Barring potential release delays, television will receive a huge accuracy boost during a time when every viewer is essential to the advertising and content creation currencies surrounding traditional television. In addition to the elimination of diaries, all local markets will be receiving enhancements over the course of the year:

• 25 LPM markets: Nielsen will utilize radio’s PPM technology to double sample size in phase one and in phase two will add return path data from set-top boxes (STBs) for further stability.
• 19 set meter markets: Nielsen will add audio PPM panel technology to double sample size and bring direct-person measurement. In addition, data from set-top boxes will be used to increase audience stability.
• 26 set meter and code reader markets: Nielsen will add data from set-top boxes to increase stability.
• 140 diary markets: Nielsen will be retiring all diaries. Data from Nielsen’s national panel along with measurement from set-top boxes will create ongoing electronic measurement in all previously self-reported viewing markets.

With these enhancements, Nielsen local measurement will have the capacity to deliver the following in every market:

• Year-round measurement, reported monthly: Previously, local measurement in diary markets were only available quarterly, but these enhancements mean more frequent and accurate information for a plethora of smaller markets.
• Increased ratings stability: Initial test results have showed a 26 percent average increase in week-to-week stability, proving more accuracy as a result of a larger audience sample size.
• More rating points: With the addition of PPM data, sample sizes increase and passive reporting of OOH TV viewing in bars and restaurants becomes possible. As a result of this comprehensive total-viewing tracking, preliminary tests in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago have shown at least single digit percent increases in overall viewership in all dayparts, and certain dayparts are showing lower double digit percent increases.
• Significantly fewer zero cells (timeslots that showed no reported viewing due to small sample size): Initial testing results have achieved a 47 percent reduction for networks and time periods that historically showed no official viewing.
• Availability for all ratings tracks as a buying currency: “Live,” “Live + Same Day,” “Live +3” and “Live +7” data streams and all traditional TV metrics such as Homes Using Television, Persons Using Television, Shares and Household and Persons measurement will be available in even the smallest markets. Thus far, results have shown a majority of Persons ratings increases for broadcast, modest cable increases and no declines.
• Local Scarborough measurement: Though the size of the questionnaires will be smaller than full-run (akin to Scarborough’s current “mid-tier” markets), this represents a survey expansion in most markets and adds a handful of smaller markets that have never had a survey.

Nielsen’s national enhancements

After six years in development, the Nielsen Total Audience Measurement (TAM) suite of products is slated to be live in the marketplace on March 1 of this year. The TAM suite hopes to achieve an apples-to-apples measurement of all viewing across linear TV, DVR (now adding days 8-35), VOD, connected TV devices (e.g., Roku, Apple TV, Xbox, PlayStation), mobile, PC and tablets. Nielsen is hopeful the new measurement system will be so all-inclusive that it will be able to deliver data for some shows on Netflix by tracking the audio fingerprints of some 6,000 individual episodes. Theoretically, the tracking could identify existing network shows available on Netflix as well as programming by any studio that agrees to imbed the necessary codes.

The development of episode-level tracking has been a painfully slow journey for an industry with so much riding on true measurement. Advertisers, networks and content creators have been awaiting a complete understanding of total viewing audiences since the advent and mass adoption of digital viewing options. Monetizing total viewing audiences is the key to progress for the video industry and without it, the industry must continue to rely on incomplete or misleading viewership data.   

The shift in paradigm with the addition of TAM will be the distinction between total content ratings and total ad ratings. Total content ratings represent Nielsen’s newest tool that was released in August 2016 and measures all digital video via a code ingrained into websites and apps. It moves away from the telecast date and time model to allow for episode-level reporting by providing viewership data for a specific episode’s entire audience across platforms. The tool looks at all platforms for episode viewership regardless of ad load, so if a network inserts a different ad structure on their app and their live broadcast, the viewing audience numbers are not affected. This data is useful for networks and content creators trying to assess the true value of their content based on the exact size of its audience, regardless of the platform.  

The total ad ratings tool will measure actual digital and linear ad ratings. It will also include what Nielsen is calling “digital in TV ratings” which is viewership of a network’s live streams through digital devices (or a replay as long as it has the same commercial load as the original live broadcast). The digital ratings will be collected by advertisers tagging their campaigns for desktop, mobile and tablet measurement and the commercial minute ratings will be measured by a subset of the national Nielsen panel.  Nielsen will assign the digital demographic ratings via its partnership with Facebook.

Last year Nielsen gave access to more than 50 participating TV and digital media brands to evaluate their own data and compare their internal numbers with Nielsen’s for an accuracy check. In spite of this transparency, and as the March live date approaches, the major TV networks have expressed grave concerns about Nielsen’s methodology and results thus far. With the state of the video industry and advertising revenues hanging in the balance, the networks need accuracy in reporting to ensure future revenue streams, distribution deals and progressive content development plans. Nielsen is standing by its product and has said the rollout will remain on schedule, with a minor release tweak. They have agreed to limit the data that is released to advertisers in order to alleviate the networks’ concerns that not all viewing sources have been incorporated into the new cross-platform ratings. While surely a very large concession in favor of the TV networks, this move may prove a prudent one until the measurement is deemed truly holistic by the content distributors.   

comScore

A new entry in the video measurement space, comScore, is looking to challenge Nielsen’s dominance.  Originally, comScore was a digital-only measurement company but recently paid $732 million to merge with Rentrak, an alternative TV ratings service that provides both national ratings as well as ratings in all 210 local DMAs. Together, the two companies feel they are poised to take on the challenge of audience reporting in the current fragmented, multi-device world.

Currently, comScore supplies a suite of digital planning and audience reporting tools that furnish audience estimates for websites across PCs and mobile devices. In addition, they have tools to measure video consumption on PCs and mobile devices. PC website usage can be measured at both a national as well as a local DMA level, but there is still not enough digital video and mobile scale to report locally. This is why comScore’s “Xmedia Planner” that seeks to combine TV and digital viewership to determine unduplicated reach only exists for planning in the national space.  

2017 initiatives for comScore in the digital research space include:

• Continue building out mobile panels as an increasing amount of consumers’ time shifts to those devices in lieu of PCs
• Integrate Hulu into over-the-top audience data
• Implement better data scrubbing that provides cleaner outputs
• Analyze more in-depth measurement of in-app behavior (video and non-video) in order to provide a more complete picture of consumer digital usage
• Gain adoption for its “Total Home Panel” product designed to identify device usage on the household level. This Roku-like device connects to a household’s router, recognizes devices and tracks activity on each device to understand household usage patterns.

As an initial foray into the traditional TV space, comScore is looking to launch its “Extended TV” product in the latter part of 2017, which it hopes will become an alternative TV currency to compete with Nielsen. Extended TV will calculate a holistic rating point for both mobile and traditional video. Additionally, comScore’s current discussions with SQAD to provide CPP estimates in this alternative currency may present a very real challenge to Nielsen’s ratings currency. Further establishing themselves in the traditional TV measurement space, comScore is intending to expand its partnerships with STB providers to provide more reliable viewing data. They hope to add Time Warner STB data to their already-robust list of partnerships with AT&T, Charter, Cox, DirecTV and Dish.

Geopath

Perhaps the greatest relative leap forward in enhanced measurement will occur in the OOH space. The organization formerly known as the Traffic Audit Bureau has rebranded itself as Geopath and plans to give OOH measurement a 21st century upgrade.

Current OOH buys are facilitated by traffic counts based on annual estimates, which are averaged across the majority of similar units in a geography. Demographic estimates based on millions of trips available from public transit surveys are also available for major units in any given market. These estimates are then adjusted to account for factors such as distance of the unit from the road, visibility and dwell time, or the length of time available to see a unit. Planned upgrades to this data in 2017 will enhance audience insights derived from the addition of data gathered from GPS systems in more recent car models, as well as the GPS signals from mobile devices. GPS location data is anonymized through a firewall while logging every activity point and trip leg each user takes. The data passes through an additional firewall and is then aggregated into activity patterns. Using this data, Geopath will upgrade exact audience insights and clarify attributes within traffic audiences on a per unit basis. This process will allow for more precise audience delivery including time of day, day of week and seasonal or monthly audience patterns. It also ramps up audience profiles by including data on vehicular and pedestrian traffic; demographics and behavioral segmentation through ERSI tapestry segments; zip code place of residence and trip purpose.

Geopath’s platform will have nationwide coverage and will include roadside inventory as well as public transit and fleet vehicles. There are no plans yet to include malls or airports due to low demand for measurement of these locations within Geopath’s member-based organization. Thus far, Geopath’s primary focus has been to onboard the upgraded data with what represents the majority of OOH inventory, but new forms will certainly be added as the system expands. Some data will be available in the second half of the year, but it likely won’t be fully functional until late 2017 or the first quarter of 2018.

From a planning and effective execution standpoint, the increased availability of granular audience data can make a marked difference for brands with any number of communication goals:

• More accuracy in the substantiation of time-of-day traffic information is incredibly valuable for businesses (especially in categories like grocery and QSR) looking to target individuals during key decision-making periods. Comparing billboard locations with varying morning and afternoon or weekend and weekday traffic can determine the most effective locations for ad impact.
• Identifying the home zip code of each location’s audience can determine the amount of waste generated by using boards on key thoroughfares. A cost analysis of total traffic and the home zip code of the location’s audience can be key factors for measuring messaging waste. This is particularly important for locally-based businesses or brands with stores in downtown versus
  suburban locations.  
• Pinpointing OOH locations that over-index against ERSI tapestry segments (e.g., “Affluent Estates,” “Enterprising Professionals” and “Family Landscapes”) elevates OOH planning beyond audience size and allows for location selection based on audience attributes.
• Understanding audience attributes is made even more effective through Geopath’s ability to determine and map drive distances within all DMAs. Rather than relying on a mileage-based trading area radius, locations can be mapped according to actual drive times and overlaid with tapestry segment information, thereby removing wasteful units from the consideration set.

In essence, Geopath’s extensive audience data takes the guesswork out of location selection and applies measurable delivery numbers against the outdated annualized average traffic counts.

An ever-evolving scenario

Measurement is taking a huge step forward in 2017 as the industry attempts to quantify fragmented audiences across platforms and add much-needed qualification to audiences once counted only in terms of size, not detailed profile. While these improvements from major research vendors are commendable, the industry agrees that audiences have fragmented at a faster rate than reliable tracking sources and the necessary refinements cannot come fast enough.

Nielsen and comScore will have their work cut out for them as they begin to apply new data to the incredibly complex video viewing ecosystem and the hope is that their national cross-platform audience tracking will someday be applicable to local DMA-level environments. As of yet, cross-platform research advancements have been confined to the national level. It is hoped that with the abolition of the linear diary and the acquisition of PPM technology Nielsen will be poised to move local measurement closer to its national counterpart. In this area, Geopath is well-positioned to report and track audiences on a closer par with their digital “competition” for advertising dollars. Out-of-home will have a new place in the overall campaign strategy as planners can incorporate real audience data and provide clear support for location selection beyond Daily Effective Circulation or EYES ON ratings.

The industry has a long road ahead, but plans for 2017 will certainly help measurement and tracking begin to catch up to consumer habits and rapidly-evolving media options.

SIDEBAR: Nielsen Versus ComScore

 The main point of differentiation for comScore is scale. With their network of STB data, comScore boasts a footprint of more than 40 million televisions in 21.5 million households, covering 99 percent of all zip codes with at least two providers in every zip code. Nielsen’s national panel, by comparison, currently stands at around 43,000 panelists and penetration in individual local markets varies. However, Nielsen also began incorporating STB data in 2016 in order to assist with measurement in local code reader markets. Nielsen currently has relationships with Charter and Dish and just announced on January 18 that they will also utilize data from AT&T’s DirecTV and U-verse STBs. Though comScore’s STB footprint and panel is far larger, Nielsen is working to make up lost ground in this space.

That said, while STB data is extremely valuable for providing scale, it is not yet perfect. STB providers do not currently have a way to identify individual viewers in each household. Since comScore relies largely on STB and Experian data as its primary audience measurement source, this can present difficulties when attempting to apply gender and age identifiers to household viewers. Though far from ideal, Nielsen’s LPM (and now PPM) panels do ask individual viewers for identification when watching TV.

Other complications in the STB data space have slowed real time access to audience measurement as well. Not every set top box can provide appropriate return path data, and because there are no standards for STB data, each cable provider’s data can vary considerably. This means an extensive data-matching process must occur to clean the data, and discrepancies abound. When Nielsen compared metered versus STB data, there was between 20 to 30 percent missing data in some cases.

In addition, select households cannot be counted through STBs. Over-the-air (OTA) only households, which include cord cutters as well as additional TVs without cable or satellite connection in cable subscribers’ homes, cannot be identified through a traditional cable STB. In a market such as Madison, Wisconsin for example, which Nielsen estimates has 23 percent OTA households accounting for 33 percent of the ratings in the market, relying solely on STB data may severely skew understanding of viewership and impression attribution. Finally, STBs are not yet technologically-advanced enough to recognize when the TV is off, but the STB data is still collecting. In this situation, viewing could appear to be recorded for hours after it actually ended. As of today, only one STB provider with a small footprint can sense when the TV is off, so comScore says they have their own methodologies and algorithms in place to identify these situations. Nielsen has addressed this issue with all Nielsen panel boxes, which have been designed to identify when the TV is off.

The current strength of comScore lies in pairing STB data with certain types of consumer purchase behavior at a local DMA level, and the best example of this involves their use of the Polk automotive database. Giving advertisers the ability to see which networks and programs deliver higher against a very specific target (i.e., certain model ownership) in comparison to those shows’ overall ratings is a powerful tool.  Because in many cases car buying is a shared decision between multiple household members in association with the head of household, comScore’s inability to match individual household ratings is not considered a weakness. However, not all products are dual-decision purchases, or appeal to both genders and multiple ages. This means that, outside of the automotive category, Nielsen’s individual household ratings still carry an advantage for brands selling products utilized predominantly by certain age groups and genders.