NEW YORK—Women’s sports advertising continues to outperform primetime TV, according to the third annual Women’s Sports TV Outcomes Report from EDO.

The study found that women’s sports ads generated 15% more impact than the average ad on primetime broadcast and cable, marking the second consecutive year this programming has exceeded the benchmark.

From NCAA basketball, lacrosse, and gymnastics to U.S. Open tennis and the WNBA, women’s sports are an exciting and rich platform for brands aiming to connect with highly engaged audiences and drive tangible consumer action.

"Another year above the primetime benchmark proves women’s sports isn’t a moment — it’s a mainstay," said Laura Grover, senior vice president and head of client solutions at EDO. "For the second straight year, ads in women’s sports outperformed primetime, and brands that align creative with cultural moments are seeing measurable engagement gains."

Many top brands from diverse industries—including Target, KFC, Skechers, Home Depot, and Outback Steakhouse—ranked among 2025’s most effective TV advertisers in women’s sports, as measured by consumer behaviors that are proven predictors of future sales, like brand searches and site visits. As women’s sports continue to deliver substantial engagement, cross-platform outcomes measurement provides brands, agencies, and publishers with an immediate view of how TV ads drive results.

"For brands, the opportunity is clear. Women’s sports deliver a powerful combination of engagement, authenticity and cultural relevance to drive meaningful advertising outcomes,” said Danielle Brown, senior vice president of sports streaming and brand solutions at Disney Advertising. “What began as a surge in popularity around NCAA championships and the WNBA has expanded into high-value programming across tennis, soccer and emerging leagues."

Key findings from EDO’s 2026 Women’s Sports TV Outcomes Report include:

• Women’s sports beat primetime ad impact — again. The average 2025 women’s sports ads generated 1.15x as much impact as the average ad on primetime broadcast and cable, a figure inclusive of diverse events ranging from the WNBA to collegiate gymnastics. This marks the second consecutive year in which women’s sports have outperformed this benchmark.
• NCAA women’s hoops final tops list of most impactful events. The NCAA women’s basketball tournament final delivered 9.4x as much impact as the average primetime program, earning the title as 2025’s most engaging women’s sports event. Three Grand Slam tennis events rounded out the top five.
• Cultural relevance is a slam dunk for brands in the WNBA. WNBA ads featuring the league’s current and former stars were 59% more effective than the average WNBA ad — and 13% more effective than WBNA ads featuring NBA players.
• Credit Card, Insurance, & QSR brands soar. The Auto & Home Insurance, Credit Card, and Quick-Serve categories combined deep investment with powerful performance to maximize their women’s sports impact. The average women’s sports ad in these categories generated 1.6x, and 1.4x, and 1.2x as much impact as the categories’ primetime broadcast and cable averages, respectively.

Visit edo.com/womens-sports to download EDO’s 2026 Women’s Sports TV Outcomes Report.

NEW YORK—Nielsen and Vizio have announced a multi-year agreement that provides the audience measurement firm with viewership information from the set maker’s Inscape Smart TV data.

Nielsen, which began licensing Inscape for national addressable measurement in 2021, now has the right to integrate Vizio’s Inscape data in both its local and national audience-measurement solutions.

The deal also includes a period of exclusivity for data gathered from an expanded roster of 400 local stations that will be processed by Inscape’s systems.

Vizio’s Inscape data captures viewing data from millions of connected TV devices (including cable box, set-top box , DVR, etc.) and streaming environments. Automatic content recognition (ACR) data provides scale, granularity and timely insights, enabling greater understanding of what is being watched in millions of U.S. households by measuring on-screen content regardless of source.

Through this agreement, Nielsen can now add Big Data from a pool of about 20 million smart TVs, a key enhancement that includes coverage for 400 stations across local U.S. markets that currently include Local People Meter, Set Meter and Portable People Meter panels.

“At Nielsen, we are committed to innovating as consumers further embrace new ways to watch their favorite programs,” said Michelle Gelman, global head of Nielsen’s Content and Syndicated Products. “Inscape’s ACR data from one of the leading Smart TV manufacturers will help us drive value to our clients and, ultimately, help them drive ROI as they seek to reach their audience.”

Added Vizio chief revenue and engagement Officer Mike O’Donnell said: “As viewing trends shift and audiences fragment across different services, Inscape has been at the forefront of powering products that are better for the consumer experience and bringing greater transparency and scale to the measurement sector. We’re excited to work with Nielsen and for the inclusion of our opted-in viewing data in Nielsen’s services as we continue to help the entire TV marketplace evolve.”

Nielsen’s panels will be used to validate what is missing in big data sets, including complete representation, over-the-air inclusion, validation of diverse representation, understanding when the TV is on or off, and person-level measurement. Nielsen will add Big Data to its national TV measurement beginning in September, a major step towards the launch of Nielsen One, the forthcoming single, deduplicated solution for cross-media measurement.

NEW YORK—In a bid to help local broadcasters find new ways of monetizing their content, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) and TVB have released a study that highlights innovations within the local television and video marketplace and offers broadcasters strategic recommendations and opportunities to help them foster a culture of creativity and growth.

“The local broadcasting industry is at an inflection point thanks to rapid changes in viewing behavior, shifts in underlying technologies and content distribution strategies, and the proliferation of new measurement, data, and identity solutions,” CIMM Managing Director Jon Watts said. “As the local TV and video marketplace progresses, it’s imperative that we understand what propels advancements, the emerging innovations, and the roles that industry stakeholders play in this transformation. Our study highlights several creative and measurement innovators in the local video advertising space who are pushing the boundaries of traditional strategies to meet the growing demand for more precise targeting, addressability, measurement and accountability, and deeper audience engagement.”

CIMM and TVB said the “Local TV and Video Innovation Showcase” is a comprehensive analysis of case studies from 16 marketplace innovators, including: AdImpact, Ampersand, Comcast Effectv, Comscore, Consumer Orbit, Dentsu, Gray Media, HyphaMetrics, Madhive, Magid’s AD.VANTAGE AI, Nexstar Media Group, New York Interconnect, Run3TV, Spectrum Reach, Tunnl and Who’s Watching TV.

The study also highlights six areas where innovation is paving the way for better technology, enhanced audience connection and improved advertising effectiveness for local TV and video businesses, Those areas include:

• Measurement: The use of cross-platform campaign measurement tools and advanced capabilities like Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) help local advertisers garner a comprehensive view of media consumption across all platforms – providing actionable audience behavior insights and precise, person-level data across markets to better understand and optimize reach.
• Attribution: Multiscreen attribution capabilities allow advertisers to link their local TV campaigns to offline customer actions, providing a clear picture of the return on ad spend.
• Cross-Platform Digital Campaigns: With real-time cross-platform campaign metrics, local advertisers can leverage a unified view of performance across both linear and digital platforms—enabling greater optimization and effectiveness across multiple channels.
• Data Integration and Audience Insights: By shifting focus from traditional demographics to the integration of diverse data sources—for example, the combination of TV viewing data with website retail activity—local advertisers can target consumers with actionable audience insights and enhanced precision.
• Content Delivery and Engagement: A data-driven approach to TV across linear, addressable, and streaming powers highly effective targeting across advertising campaigns—empowering advertisers to deliver precise, hyperlocal campaigns that drive incremental audience engagement and sales.
• Operational Efficiency: Best practices like streamlining data reporting for swift analysis and providing local ad sales teams with instant, high-quality marketing content improve workflow efficiency, strategic decision-making, and overall business productivity.

“Local TV and video remain a foundational element of the viewer experience, which is why innovation is imperative in maintaining its relevance in a constantly evolving market,” TVB Executive Vice President and Chief Research Officer Hadassa Gerber said. “What we’ve found is that the industry continues to meet new challenges with resilience, redefining what’s possible in local broadcasting and cementing it as an invaluable component of the TV and video landscape at large. It’s an exciting time for the market, and TVB is proud to be a part of this collective effort to adapt and thrive.”

The Local TV and Video Innovation Showcase, co-authored by industry experts Patti Cohen and Matt Ross, is the result of ongoing industry analysis driven by CIMM’s Local TV Measurement Working Group of local TV experts that defined the purpose and scope of the study.

The full study can be found here.

NEW YORK—Nielsen has announced that the Graham Media Group has renewed and expenaded its multi-year agreement for Local TV measurement across their six markets (Detroit, Houston, San Antonio, Orlando, Jacksonville, Roanoke).

The expanded agreement also includes Scarborough, which provides consumer insights that connect the dots between media consumption and local brands, retailers, and consumer behaviors.

New to the agreement is Nielsen’s Local Over the Top (OTT) measurement, which captures incremental impressions to Local TV and reports them with comparable metrics for the benefit of buyers, sellers, and content producers, and Digital Content Ratings (DCR), which Graham Media will use in their Jacksonville market.

These solutions will provide Graham Media stations with cross-platform insights to drive new content and revenue opportunities, the two companies reported.

“We are excited to continue working with Nielsen as our measurement provider and are encouraged by their commitment to innovation that matches our own,” said Catherine Badalamente, president and CEO at Graham Media Group. “Trusted audience insights are critical to understand our audience across all platforms and equip our advertisers with data to inform their strategies.”

“Nielsen is proud to expand our partnership with Graham Media Group and deliver the most comprehensive view of their Local Linear, Digital, and Streaming audiences,” added Paul LeFort, managing director of Nielsen’s Local TV business. “Our commitment to innovation, including enhanced insights backed by our comprehensive Big Data + Panel Local TV measurement, empowers broadcasters, publishers & advertisers with accurate, representative & cross-platform measurement to drive the Local TV business forward.”

NEW YORK—Paramount Global and Nielsen have inked a new, multiyear deal that will provide measurement for all of the company’s platforms, including national and local broadcast, all cable networks,and streaming on Paramount+ and Pluto TV.

In addition, Paramount has licensed new Nielsen services as part of this agreement, including Advanced Audiences, Big Data + Panel, Ad-Supported Streaming Platform Ratings, Nielsen One Ads for Connected Television and national out-of-home expansion to inform advertising, programming and licensing strategies.

“Paramount and Nielsen are committed to addressing Television’s multiplatform future to the benefit of all of our stakeholders,” George Cheeks, president and CEO of CBS and co-CEO, Paramount Global, said. “[Nielsen CEO] Karthik [Rao] and his team continue to meet the needs of our marketplace across all our platforms, and we are incredibly pleased to reinforce and reinvigorate our deal with our longtime partner.”

Along with the new agreement, Nielsen also released new viewing data for Paramount.

In terms of sports, the data showed that CBS’s broadcast of the AFC Championship Game on Jan.26 averaged 57.7 million viewers, setting the all-time record for the AFC and the largest overall NFL conference championship in 15 years. CBS coverage of the 2024 NFL regular season included three of the top five NFL games in October; the highest rated game (27.5 million viewers) in the November interval; and two of the top five in a hotly contested December.

As the broadcast season swung into action this fall, the data also showed that CBS was once again establishing itself as a leader in broadcast dramas, building on its track record to develop new franchises. “Tracker” came back for its second season and took the crown as the top drama program in October (11.3 million average viewers), November (11.6 million) and December (10.8 million).

The reimagined “Matlock” came in a close second to “Tracker” in all three months and was joined by “FBI,” “Elsbeth,” “NCIS,” and the farewell season of “Blue Bloods” in the top 10 every month this fall. The total viewing time by Americans of CBS dramas across the fourth quarter of 2024 topped 50 trillion viewing minutes, which approaches 100,000 years of viewing, more than any other broadcast network.

Paramount+ also experienced major success in 2024 with original series “Lioness,” “Tulsa King” and one of the most talked about shows of the season, “Landman,” which has given the platform its first billion-minute (in a week) performer. The three titles have all appeared in the Nielsen Streaming Top 10 simultaneously in multiple weeks this fall, another first for the platform. Paramount also earned wins for its multi-platform strategy. In 2024, the most-watched new dramas across broadcast and streaming combined were Tracker, with 26.07 billion minutes viewed (CBS, Paramount+, Hulu) and “Elsbeth,” with 14.94 billion minutes viewed (CBS, Paramount+).

NEW YORK and ATLANTA—Nielsen and Cox Media Group (CMG) have inked a multiyear renewal agreement for television and audio measurement services covering CMG's local television and radio stations.

As part of the agreement, CMG will continue to utilize a comprehensive suite of Nielsen measurement services to sell advertising.

CMG’s businesses include 14 television brands in 9 markets. The TV portfolio includes multiple primary affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Telemundo and MyNetworkTV, as well as several independent stations.

CMG has 50 radio stations delivering multiple content genres in 10 markets and numerous streaming and digital platforms.

More information is available at coxmediagroup.com.

NEW YORK—The Media Rating Council (MRC) has approved the integration of first-party live streaming data into Nielsen’s accredited National Television service. In addition, the MRC renewed accreditation for Nielsen’s National Panel measurement.

Nielsen is already incorporating first party data from Amazon Prime Video into its audience figures for Thursday Night Football and the accreditation could lead to similar efforts with major ad-supported streaming services.

Nielsen reported that the MRC’s vote of confidence in Nielsen’s first-party data integration makes Nielsen the first accredited live-streaming solution with persons-level granularity. The approval of first-party data integration bolsters all of streaming measurement moving forward.

“We’re thrilled and humbled to earn first-party approval from the MRC. It’s a great affirmation of Nielsen’s ability to innovate at the speed of the market, while doing so in a safe and verified way,” said Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao. “With time-tested methodologies like our accredited persons panel and precise new solutions for the streaming era, we believe Nielsen is right where the industry needs us to be—at the convergence of all the ways people watch content. This will give the industry a true view of linear and streaming viewing like never before.”

“We congratulate Nielsen on the renewal of accreditation of its National Television Panel Measurement and on receiving approval to integrate its first-party streaming data into the panel measurement,” said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the MRC. “This was a significant effort and we appreciate Nielsen’s ongoing commitment to the MRC accreditation process.”

NEW YORK—The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) has announced that it is working with XR Extreme Reach and VEIL Global Technologies to launch of a new initiative to assess the role that an open, universal watermarking across linear and streaming TV platforms could play in supporting improved measurement of content and advertising in the U.S. TV and video marketplace. 

The study will evaluate the options for deployment and the potential role for an industry action plan to accelerate the adoption of an open, universal watermarking standard, the group said. 

Watermarking is a technique that is used to embed signals into both the content and ads that can be read at playout. These signals link metadata, which provides details about the content including, title, ownership and permitted rights associated. For advertising, the signals are also used for measurement.

“Watermarks aren’t new, of course, but many of CIMM’s members believe that watermarks and robust asset identification could play a vital role in today’s TV and video marketplace to enable accurate cross-platform measurement and more efficient and transparent media workflows,” said Jon Watts, Managing Director, CIMM. “Our goal with this study is to provide an authoritative assessment that can help to align the industry, buy-side and sell-side, around a clear plan for moving forward. Working with XR Extreme Reach and VEIL, we’re delighted to have brought together an impressive group of seasoned industry participants to support the study.”

More specifically, the new study will look to explore whether:

• Widespread adoption of an open, universal watermarking standard could materially help to improve measurement of content and advertising.
• There are technically, operationally, and economically viable options for widespread adoption and rapid deployment of a universal watermark across the TV and video ecosystem.
• A coordinated industry action plan could play a valuable role in helping to accelerate adoption and streamline execution.

The initial feasibility study will be delivered via a CIMM Project Steering Group (PSG) led by Caroline Horner of Lift Analytics. The PSG, which is responsible for input and guidance surrounding key frameworks, study design, emerging findings, conclusions, and recommendations, includes: Thomas Morgan (MediaD.tv); Howard Fiderer; Irwin Gotlieb; Myles Parker; as well as Watts, Kevin O’Reilly (XR Extreme Reach) and Harold Geller (VEIL).

“Brands spend billions of dollars on creative yet lack the simple ability to track and measure it across the ecosystem," said Kevin O’Reilly, chief strategy officer at XR Extreme Reach. "Universal watermarking and creative identification across both linear and streaming TV can help the largest brand in the world customers the integrity and authenticity of creative content across the complex ad ecosystem and address fragmentation and measurement gaps. We're proud to partner with CIMM and industry leaders to create a plan that delivers transparency, accuracy, and control for more effective cross-platform campaigns, no matter where the ad is transacted, delivered, or measured.”

“The advertising industry is closing in on nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars globally, and yet you find people extremely dissatisfied with measurement processes,” said Gotlieb, former chairman and global CEO of GroupM, and VEIL Board member. “A business of our scale and importance deserves the best technology available to solve a problem, and in my view, watermarking is the only way forward.”

The PSG will work closely and collaboratively with an Expert Advisory Group (EAG), comprising a cross-section of senior industry marketers to test and refine key hypotheses and explore perspectives and motivations. 

The EAG comprises of Alan Young (Zixi); Benjamin Vandegrift (VAB); Bill Ekstrand (Horizon Media); Brian West (NBCU); Cintia Gabilan (IAB); Deborah Murray (GroupM); Frank Friedman (Scripps); Helen Katz (Publicis); Jeff Ellin (FreeWheel);Jodie McAfee; Joe Winograd (Verance);  Larry Allen (Comcast Advertising); Mari Tangredi (Cadent); Maureen Bosetti (IPG Mediabrands); Nada Bradbury (AD-ID); Tom Hicks (Paramount); Tom Sly (Scripps); Vinny Rinaldi (Hersheys); and more, CIMM reported

NEW YORK—The digital media measurement and analytics firm DoubleVerify has announced that it has received Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for Video Viewable Impressions and related viewability metrics in Connected TV (CTV) environments. 

“We are proud to receive this latest MRC accreditation, reinforcing DV’s leadership in CTV measurement,” said Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. “We commit to uphold the highest standards of data accuracy and transparency in digital media. This new accreditation further expands our extensive MRC accreditations across DV’s industry-leading pre- and post-bid CTV solution to give global advertisers greater clarity and confidence in their premium CTV investments.”

This new accreditation expands DV’s MRC accreditations for its CTV pre-bid data segments to include property-level brand suitability, contextual and Fully On-screen segments, the company said. This adds to DV’s previous MRC accreditations within CTV, which include display and video impressions, video completion metrics, pre- and post-bid invalid traffic filtration and property- or app-level ad verification (brand suitability) measurement in nine languages.

The issue of viewability is important the company noted because in the CTV space, there is a common misconception that ads are inherently viewable due to the nature of the device and user experience. DV’s research shows, however, that over one in three impressions serve into environments that fire ads when the TV is turned off. This issue is estimated to contribute $1 billion in wasted advertising spend in CTV annually.

“The addition of video viewability in Connected TV to DoubleVerify’s range of MRC-accredited metrics represents an important step forward, and once again speaks to DV’s commitment to quality in measurement,” commented George W. Ivie, executive director and CEO of the MRC.  “We congratulate them on this latest achievement.”

DV first earned MRC accreditation in February 2013 and over time has expanded its range of accredited pre- and post-bid solutions. For more information about DV, please visit www.doubleverify.com. 

NEW YORK—Nielsen has a multi-year renewal with Circle City Broadcasting, Indiana's only locally owned and operated broadcast and digital news media network, for Local TV measurement. 

As part of the new agreement, Circle City will also use Nielsen’s Local Over the Top (OTT) measurement, which measures local audiences across both streaming apps and linear television. This added capability will generate incremental Impressions for Circle City’s Broadcast and Digital platform and provide a more comprehensive view of their reach across multiple platforms, the companies said. 

"At Circle City we’re proud to serve our local communities every day. We truly value Nielsen’s approach to innovation and ongoing investments in Local TV. We are excited to be adding Local OTT measurement to gain an even deeper understanding of our local audiences regardless of where or how they’re watching,” said DuJuan McCoy, owner and president of Circle City Broadcasting.

“We are thrilled to extend our long-standing work with  Circle City to report their deep & diverse audiences with  insights they need to drive content decisions and incremental revenue opportunities for their audiences across Indiana,” said Paul LeFort, managing director of Nielsen’s Local TV business. “As our Big Data + Panel solution for Local TV comes to market this year, Nielsen remains committed to serving our customers with best in class Local TV measurement inclusive of Over-the-Air, Out-of-Home and direct persons measurement , and representing the diverse communities served by broadcasters like Circle City. 

NEW YORK—Nielsen has inked a multi-year renewal agreement with Hallmark Media to measure linear TV across all three of their networks (Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, and Hallmark Drama). 

The company will also continue to utilize Nielsen's streaming platform and content ratings for insights related to its SVOD and FAST/AVOD services. 

The companies reported that the renewal comes as Hallmark Channel completed the full 2023 year as the #1 most-watched entertainment cable network among key demographics (#1 most-watched network of the year in Total Day and Weekend Total Day among Households; Total Viewers; Women 25-54; Women and Persons 18+ and 55+). 

In addition, the channel's holiday programming event Countdown to Christmas boosted the network to top the linear charts last quarter, elevating it to be the most-watched entertainment cable network in Q4 among Women 18+ for the entire 2020s. 

"Our renewal extends our partnership with Nielsen to continue to utilize their authoritative suite of services to provide analytics and insights for our company," said Hallmark Media's senior vice president of revenue and strategic research, Tom Ziangas. "As viewing patterns continue to evolve and fractionalize across the industry, this partnership will allow us to understand the interaction of our widely beloved brand of content across platforms and meet the needs of our advertisers and viewers alike."

"We are excited to continue our long-standing relationship with Hallmark as their provider of audience measurement, and deliver the data and insights to help power their strategic growth initiatives and showcase their unique value proposition to advertisers," said Amilcar Perez, chief revenue officer at Nielsen. "As The Gauge shows, streaming content consumption continues to grow. Nielsen is at the forefront of providing the most comprehensive view of consumer behavior across both linear and streaming today."

NEW YORK—Nielsen has announced plans in 2024 to expand coverage of its National TV out-of-home (OOH) panel in order to fully represent all U.S. TV households.

The move will be particularly important for broadcasters, channels and streaming platforms airing sports, news and other high profile live events. 

"Nielsen is highly focused on innovating in order to better serve our clients and ensure our measurement accounts for the full landscape of television consumption," said Deirdre Thomas, chief product officer, audience measurement at Nielsen. "We understand how important it is for our clients to be able to have the most complete picture of the audience, especially for special events like the Super Bowl."

"We are appreciative of Nielsen's efforts to make out-of-home measurement more complete, providing a much clearer picture of the true audience for all television viewing and especially sports viewership," said Paul Ballew, chief data and analytics officer of the NFL. "For years we have been consistent in our belief that major sports events, like the upcoming Super Bowl LVIII, are often viewed with family and friends in large gatherings and this expanded out-of-home viewership will be crucial to measuring those events."

Nielsen plans to provide impact data in Q4 2024, in time for Super Bowl LIX.

For nearly a decade, Nielsen has been capturing viewing that occurs outside of the home, including airports, hotels, bars and restaurants. Through proprietary Portable People Meter (PPM) Wearables technology, Nielsen has delivered metrics for out-of-home audiences to ensure clients can track viewer consumption regardless of the platform, screen or location. By adding additional homes to the PPM Wearables footprint, Nielsen's OOH coverage will expand from 65% to 100%.

Nielsen stressed that capturing this viewing audience is critical for genres of television that people tend to watch communally, particularly sporting events, which continue to grow as one the most important programming genres in live television. Nielsen data shows that in 2023, fans in the U.S. spent more than 1.7 trillion minutes watching games from the five most-watched sports leagues.

As people's consumption of streaming TV grows - to 36% of total television usage as of December 2023, according to Nielsen's The Gauge – the importance of measuring live sports and other "appointment" viewing on both linear and streaming also grows, Nielsen said. 

With streaming services increasingly tapping into the live sports space, there is additional demand for measurement of this audience, Nielsen also noted in explaining the expansion of its OOH viewing efforts. 

WINCHESTER, Mass.—Diesel Labs has unveiled Audience Attention Top 10, a public-facing feature showcasing the week’s most popular content across four categories, including movies, shows, top content and most anticipated.

The insights, used by industry experts to make informed media and marketing decisions, are now available for free to everyone for the first time, the company said.

“Diesel Labs has always been passionate about fostering innovation across media analytics,” said Anjali Midha, CEO and co-founder of Diesel Labs, “With the release of the Audience Attention Top 10, Diesel continues evolving to meet the demands of the tech, media and marketing industries with micro precision to derive macro understanding. We are excited to bring our analysis of top content to our industry partners.” 

Updated weekly, the Audience Attention Top 10 is ranked by Diesel’s Attention proprietary metric, which summarizes engagement across video views, page views, shares, comments and likes. It includes input for every major social platform, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Wikipedia and YouTube, the company said.

The Audience Attention Top 10 is designed specifically for journalists and the general public looking to identify the biggest trends of the week, and it complements other media rankings, including the Netflix Top 10 and Nielsen’s Top 10, Diesel Labs said.

Diesel's proprietary technology stack produces and contextualizes topic intelligence for both text and numerical-based insights in any space. The company measures audience attention across all major social and video platforms—curating, organizing, analyzing and readying information for seamless integration into business intelligence tools and generative AI models alike, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON—MetaBroadcast, the UK's leading metadata management specialist, and Nielsen’s Gracenote have announced that they have been awarded a three year contract renewal by Barb, the U.K. audience measurement service, to operate its combined content ID and genre allocation system from January 2025.

Barb is the main provider of TV measurement in the U.K. 

As part of the deal, MetaBroadcast will use industry-leading Gracenote schedule metadata and unique content identifiers to reduce timescales for accurate programme identification, validation, enrichment and genre classification, as well as improve coverage and accuracy of broadcaster IDs. 

The inclusion of Gracenote will also allow Barb to better deduplicate content and accelerate reporting from seven days to three days after programmes are first made available on linear channels or streaming services.

"MetaBroadcast is delighted to continue supporting Barb by leveraging the robust metadata management capabilities of Atlas, our cloud-based active data platform, and by now working with premier global metadata provider Gracenote to improve content ID coverage and classification," said Jamie Mackinlay, CEO, MetaBroadcast. "We recognise the importance of accurate, consistent, and timely programme data that allows Barb to fulfill the needs of its audience measurement customer base. We look forward to continuing our collaboration."

"By leveraging Gracenote's unique content IDs and programme metadata, measurement providers can quickly identify and better understand what people are watching across different services and platforms," said Tim Cutting, chief revenue officer at Gracenote. "We look forward to working with MetaBroadcast and enabling Barb to deliver new levels of speed, accuracy, consistency and completeness in their multi-screen audience measurement."

Barb's audience measurement relies on a system for identifying and classifying traditional linear broadcast, catch up or streaming viewing. Using Gracenote data as a key system input will ensure consistent programme titles and genres, accurate connections between programmes and episodes and linkages to broadcasters' linear and streaming content across platforms, the companies added. 

BELLEVUE, Wash. & NEW YORK—Amid ongoing consolidation in the ad measurement and tech sector, iSpot.tv has acquired 605, a measurement and attribution company. 

The deal brings together two independent TV measurement companies with a significant customer footprint across brands, TV networks and streaming publishers. The acquisition is iSpot’s fourth in five years and the largest to date. Parties are not disclosing the terms of the deal.

Besides expanding its TV measurement market share, the acquisition of 605 bolsters iSpot’s measurement solutions for video and TV advertising effectiveness, especially in the areas of business outcome attribution, advanced audience measurement, media planning and data science managed services, the companies reported. 

“605 has developed an impressive technology architecture, a great approach to using big data and a suite of powerful solutions that nicely complement our own,” says Sean Muller, founder and CEO of iSpot. “We are excited to integrate their world-class team of engineers and data scientists in our mission to modernize measurement effectiveness and new currencies.”

With the acquisition, iSpot will add set-top box data from 16.6 million homes to its smart TV data footprint, bringing iSpot’s total available TV device footprint to 82.7 million. The combined data sets, which include smart TV data from Vizio and LG, will serve as a foundation for delivering accurate, representative measurement and new currencies to the TV marketplace.

“We launched 605 seven years ago with the idea that high-quality data and advanced analytics would make television advertising even more effective, from planning and segmentation all the way through to attribution and now prediction. During a time of profound change in our industry, I could not be more proud of the team for delivering on that promise,” said Kristin Dolan, founder of 605 and today the CEO of AMC Networks. “iSpot has built a large and loyal customer base, particularly with large brand advertisers, and is a pioneer in the measurement space. I can’t wait to see the things this powerful combination of technology and talent can achieve and bring to a growing array of clients and partners under iSpot’s leadership.”

The deal for 605 will provide iSpot with innovative solutions that have been broadly adopted by TV networks and will augment iSpot’s offerings. These include best-in-class business outcome attribution solutions that measure effectiveness against CPG sales, auto sales, credit card, location, search and survey KPIs. Capabilities also include a powerful planning and optimization platform, advanced audience segmentation and predictive analytics capabilities powered by machine learning.

All 85 employees of 605 will be joining iSpot, bringing total employee count to 464. In the immediate term, 605 will continue to operate as an iSpot company, building and supporting 605 solutions. 

The companies also said that they will work together to integrate all products under a single offering that will utilize a unified data spine and technology infrastructure for all measurement and currency offerings.

LEEDS, U.K.—Cloud playout specialist Coralbay.tv Ltd has announced that the company has integrated Nielsen watermarking into its flagship coralPlay product.

The integration with Nielsen means that Coralbay.tv customers playing out channels into geographical regions supported by Nielsen can benefit from Nielsen’s audience measurement technology. 

“We are really pleased to have integrated coralPlay with the Nielsen SDK and to have completed the qualification,” explained Peter Hajittofi, CEO of Coralbay.tv. “Our coralPlay customers can now insert Nielsen watermarks into the TV signal and this enables them to benefit from audience measurement and analytics data that Nielsen can produce.”

Via the Nielsen Software Development Kit ( SDK), coralPlay inserts watermarks into the audio stream of the TV signal that identifies the programs that are being distributed to Nielsen clients, enabling Nielsen audience measurement, the company explained. 

The watermarks are decoded by downstream devices that can detect the programs that each viewer watches. Using this information, Nielsen can generate important analytics data, such as how and when people watch programs, the popularity of certain programs, demographics and other useful analytics.

As well as developing the software to interface to Nielsen’s SDK, the integration involved extensive testing and QA as part of Nielsen’s qualification process. This has now been completed and Nielsen watermarking integration is now available to coralPlay customers.

SAN FRANCISCO—Samba TV and TikTok today released the findings of a first-of-its-kind partnered study measuring the effectiveness of advertising on the global entertainment platform to deliver awareness and conversion into viewership of shows, movies, and live events.

As the media landscape continues to fragment, content providers are eager to identify the most effective ways to drive “tune-in” beyond traditional television campaigns. To assess the value of TikTok advertising to deliver against the emerging currency of viewership, the company tapped data and measurement company Samba TV to commission over 30 independent tune-in studies across a variety of advertisers and program genres to measure the value of TikTok at driving viewership from the small screen to the big screen.

The findings provide new insights for advertisers into how best they can identify not only incremental audiences but viewers that are likely to engage more deeply with their content than other acquisition efforts. Samba TV found that 97% of TikTok campaigns contributed incremental tune-ins, driving audiences who were exposed to ads to go on to view the program. On average, TikTok campaigns saw a statistically significant lift in tune-ins of 159%.

Importantly, these were not just casual viewers—TikTok’s campaigns drove highly-engaged viewers who tuned in after exposure to ads on TikTok and logged an average watch time of 86 minutes, a 26% increase in consumption compared to the control group, TikTok said.

"Our goal at TikTok is to help brands reach, connect, and engage with new audiences in an entertaining and impactful way," said Jorge Ruiz, Global Head of Marketing Science at TikTok. "Our research with Samba TV showcases the power of TikTok's unique value proposition for advertisers seeking to drive newfound levels of entertaining and effective engagement."

“Results of our measurement study demonstrate that TikTok can drive conversion for other streaming providers and other entertainment platforms. As the top entertainment destination for Gen Z globally, TikTok is a highly-effective platform for tapping into not only the most engaged young audiences, but also a diverse set of viewers,” said Ashwin Navin, Co-Founder and CEO of Samba TV. “Our work together further showcases TikTok is a top advertising destination for entertainment marketers looking to drive engagement and viewership, as test cases saw triple-digit lift on average, kept viewers engaged for longer periods of time, and delivered a strong ROI as a platform for driving eyeballs to their intended destination.”

TikTok says it selected Samba TV to conduct a series of tune-in measurement studies because of the depth and breadth of measurement capabilities, found to be the most representative in the U.S. 

In addition to measuring advertisers' campaigns on TikTok, Samba TV also tracked real-time television advertising for that same show or event. The studies found that 45% of TikTok tune-ins were not exposed to the TV portion of the campaign, suggesting that TikTok is an effective channel for reaching viewers who may not watch traditional TV advertising. In fact, Samba TV data found that TikTok campaigns were six times more likely to reach light TV viewers than linear television. In terms of efficiency, TikTok was found to be 1.2x more cost-efficient than TV at driving tune-ins, with a median cost per tune-in for TikTok of only $1.06.

NEW YORK—The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) is calling for a notable change in the way TV viewing is measured by proposing a “gradual migration” away from “TV households” to “TV-accessible (TVA) households” as the basis of TV measurement. 

The move reflects an ongoing shift in the way TV content is viewed and the fact that a growing number of homes view TV content on mobile devices without owning a TV. Making the change would capture currently unmeasured viewing on mobile devices by viewers that tend to skew younger. 

In making the recommendation, ARF cited data showing that 14% of households headed by an 18- to 34-year-old have no TV set, and a whopping 39% of single 18- to 24-year-olds living alone access TV through devices only.

That data comes from ARF’s comprehensive TV universe study, DASH, the 2022 version of which was recently released. Developed in conjunction with NORC at the University of Chicago and a panel of industry experts, DASH is based on a survey of more than 10,000 adults conducted online, in-person and by phone. DASH uses a national probability sample to produce reliable, projectable results.

The traditional basis of measurement, TV Households, counts households with at least one television set. DASH 2022 shows that 5% of US households do not own a TV set, but the majority of those, roughly 4% of US households, have broadband access and consume TV on devices through streaming services and virtual MVPDs. 

Using TV-accessible (TVA) households as the basis of measurement includes this emerging segment of TV-set-less TV watchers, the ARF said. 

“This trend towards devices also holds true for audiences that do have a television set in the household – across age and marital status demographics,” said Paul Donato, chief research officer at the ARF. “Forty-one percent of consumers with television sets reported watching professionally produced programming on a device the previous day. These dynamics highlight the problems with cross-device measurement today. This finding in particular dilutes the ‘representativeness’ of ACR streams and makes calibration with a reference standard like DASH essential for effective measurement.”

The steep rise in penetration of broadband only (BBO) households, from 25% to 31% in the last year, and the ubiquity of mobile devices with high-quality screens suggest strongly that this segment will only grow, the group said. 

The data set, which provides users a cohesive understanding of TV, device, media and ecommerce usage at both the individual and household levels, also found that:

• Television set brands impact room placement and co-viewing, with implications for media measurement and delivery: Television sets made by major brands are more likely to show up in the living room, media room and den, while less expensive television set brands are more likely to be placed in a bedroom. TV sets in living and media rooms are more likely to be co-viewed, while those in bedrooms are likely to have viewers from specific generations of the family. These location dynamics are important for brands to consider, especially as TV manufacturers build out FAST networks and sell their own ACR data for measurement.
• “Portfolio” dynamics appear in Americans’ adoption of streaming TV services. More than three-quarters of US TVA households now have portfolios of two or more streaming services, and fully half have four or more. Despite the proliferation of choices, Netflix remains a “core holding” in most portfolios. 
• The rise in AVOD (ad-supported) services has added a new dimension. Counterintuitively for some, the more streaming services a household has, the more likely there is to be at least one AVOD service in the mix. The majority (65%) of households with fewer than three streaming services have remained exclusively SVOD. On the other end of the spectrum, 69% of households with five or more services have at least one AVOD service in their portfolios. 
• Topline data from the first longitudinal DASH sample showed that 32% of households cut back on premium streaming services, while 39% added more to their portfolios. Thirty-six percent added ad-supported services. Data from the second longitudinal sample, in DASH 2023, will enable a more robust analysis of portfolio-building dynamics and switching, especially between SVOD and AVOD tiers.
• Churn between Pay TV and broadband only (BBO) goes both ways, but BBO has the edge: The DASH 2022 sample contained 3,141 respondents who also participated in the 2021 survey, enabling longitudinal observation of shifts in household subscriptions from a unified base. Analysis of this sample shows that 76% of households with pay TV in 2021 remained pay TV households in 2022, while 20% dropped pay and shifted to broadband only between 2021 and 2022. Conversely, 18% of the households that were BBO in 2021 picked up a pay TV subscription in 2022. While those percentages are close, pay TV in 2021 had a much bigger base than broadband only. BBO penetration increased by a net 6 points, mostly from households that dropped pay TV, the group said. 

The evolution of DASH will be explored in a session entitled, “DASH: Building a New Standard in TV,” at the ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE event on April 25.

For more information about DASH and licensing opportunities, visit: https://thearf.org/dash/.

NEW YORK—Some of the world’s largest media companies have formed a consortium to design a new method of measuring media consumption in an attempt to streamline the process of measuring premium video content as well as provide an alternative to Nielsen.

Fox, NBCUniversal, Paramount, TelevisaUnivision, and Warner Bros. Discovery and the VAB are working with advanced advertising company OpenAP to form a new Joint Industry Committee on Premium Video Currency (JIC) “to enable multiple currencies with the primary focus of creating a measurement certification process to establish the suitability of emerging cross-platform measurement solutions in advance of the 2024 upfront.”

The JIC said the process to develop measurement certification standards is currently underway and will be formalized and officially announced March 1st. It will reveal its preliminary findings April 25. It said it is also reaching out to other qualified premium video programmers to join the committee and elicit active participation from advertising agencies and qualified trade bodies to advance the multi-currency proposal.

AMong the JIC’s tasks are:

• Establish and maintain a measurement certification process in partnership with the VAB that will be housed inside of the JIC for third-party measurement vendors conducting cross-platform premium video currency services that will be operational by the start of the 2024 season, starting in the Fall of 2023.
• Create a programmer data set to enable third-party measurement vendors by harmonizing streaming viewership data brought together by OpenAP infrastructure.
• Engage a third-party audit firm to verify the accuracy of the streaming viewership dataset in order to maintain measurement independence and neutrality.
• Collaborate with the VAB and ANA to accelerate progress made to measurement calibration by both parties, as well as with other key Industry Trade Bodies including the 4A's, IAB, ARF and more.

"The sustainability of the premium video advertising model depends on an ecosystem for measurement that is transparent, independent, inclusive, and accurately reflects the way all people consume premium video content today – across multiple screens, connections, and devices. By coming together to establish this JIC, we can collaborate and accelerate the efforts to implement a new multi-currency future that fosters more competition, inclusivity and innovation and will ultimately better serve advertisers, agencies and consumers," said Jeff Shell, CEO of NBCUniversal; Bob Bakish, CEO of Paramount; Wade Davis, CEO of TelevisaUnivision; and David Zaslav, President and CEO, Warner Bros. Discovery in a joint statement.

Nielsen, in a statement to NextTV, said: "We appreciate working with all the industry bodies vested in the best way to measure the changing audience and providing fidelity and trust between advertisers, agencies, publishers and platforms. We continue to believe it is critical to have measurement that is transparent, consistent, auditable and independent."

Ashwin Navin, Co-Founder and CEO of TV measurement company Samba TV also commented on the news: “It has long been clear that the U.S. model of a single measurement monopoly would not be able to keep pace with the rapid state of change in viewing behavior we are experiencing today and that it would ultimately fail to provide the kind of diversity and accuracy in measurement that media buyers are demanding.

"This news is a critical step towards a multi-currency world where the industry is empowered to adopt the data and technology it needs to develop advanced and transparent methodologies for measurement versus the legacy black box tools we have been confined to for decades. This is a great moment for publishers who will have full transparency into the value of their programming, for advertisers who will be empowered to go beyond legacy models from two generations ago that no longer make sense in today’s diverse audience and programming world, and for consumers who will now have far more advanced tools measuring their attention providing better insights to guide content investments.  

"One of the biggest challenges of the legacy approach to measurement today is the one-size-fits-all approach, which may have made sense a half century ago but frankly makes no sense in today's incredibly diverse and fragmented media landscape. A program that attracts a highly-diverse or hard to reach audience for example, but ultimately captures a smaller overall share of attention of a mainstream program, could be cancelled under the existing legacy model. By embracing new and innovative methods that go well beyond the simple age and gender metrics that have guided the industry for decades, and empower advertisers and programmers to truly understand who their audiences are and their real value, we will enable creators to continue to think outside the box in the development of incredibly diverse and entertaining content.” 

PHOENIX, Ariz.—AZTV7 (KAZT-TV), the only locally owned and operated broadcast station in the Phoenix market, and its family of channels, has inked an agreement with Comscore to use Comscore’s local TV currency as the primary measurement source to sell and post advertising buys. 

With Comscore’s database of 340,000+ homes in the Phoenix market, KAZT said the deal will allow it to offer advertisers greater stability in its measurement, granular reporting down to the quarter hour and more accurate data. 

“Based on the growing agency demand in the Phoenix market for Comscore’s currency, we decided to partner with Comscore,” said KAZT general manager Rick Soltesz. “This robust data set will allow us to not only highlight the size of our audience but also the quality to advertisers looking to reach Phoenix viewers.”

Comscore joins the KAZT portfolio of other research resources including Marshall Marketing, Scarborough, WideOrbit, Cox Reps Television Analytics and others, the station reported. 

“Partnering with Comscore to utilize its local TV currency is an important step for KAZT,” station owner Lynn Londen, CEO of Londen Media added. “We need to keep pace with the fast-changing viewer and it’s clear that Comscore can help us do that through its delivery of next-generation research that has already been adopted by television selling and buying communities in Phoenix and nationally.”

NEW YORK—At a time when advertisers, media companies and TV players are struggling with outdated measurement systems that poorly measure viewing and the performance of ads across platforms, IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standard-setting body, is launching a new initiative to set technical standards to bring universal addressability to all TV environments.

"The TV advertising delivery, distribution, and measurement landscape is fragmented, creating significant friction within the supply chain. Just like consumers want a seamless viewing experience across streaming and traditional viewing methods, buyers want to be able to buy, measure, and reconcile in a holistic, transparent, and consistent way across all television environments," said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab. "At Tech Lab, we have spent the last year analyzing converging use cases between legacy and connected television, getting educated on technical standards across environments, and understanding the trajectory of TV viewing and media investment. We're confident this initiative will shepherd television buyers and sellers into the future."

Tech Lab's Advanced Television initiative encompasses all television environments. It’s objectives include:

• Create the structure for streamlined and normalized reconciliation of TV buys across CTV, linear, and broadcast environments.
• Establish a common technical framework for audience interoperability, universal addressability, and cross-environment frequency capping.
• Develop open-source, auditable measurability for tracking ad creative across all platforms.
• Further develop Advanced TV anti-fraud measures and more accurately account for viewability.
• Standardize the foundation for an impression-based TV market and universal ad break management using frame-accurate ad break signaling.
• Establish a common technical framework for omnichannel programmatic buying via upfronts as well as spot buys.
• Introducing Video Watermark Technology.

In order to achieve many of the goals outlined by Tech Lab, Video Watermark Technology will be instrumental, the group said. Based on already developed ATSC 3.0 standards as a sustainable, long-term, glass-based, client-side technology, the A/335 Video Watermark can be used for multiple operations, such as viewability verification measurement and frame-accurate ad replacement to increase addressable inventory in linear media.

"The adoption of an open watermark standard is critical to achieving standardization across the myriad of channels and devices consumers use to watch TV. It will enable the industry to achieve interoperability, improve measurement, and bring greater efficiency to a converging TV advertising landscape," said Shailley Singh, executive vice president, product and chief operating officer, IAB Tech Lab. "As part of this initiative, we will define standard use cases, develop operational workflow guidance, and identify how watermark technology will work for each use case."

In addition to introducing video watermark standards, Tech Lab will also explore how an open standardized video watermark can enhance the use of current technologies like SCTE, ACR, OMSDK, and VAST across all TV delivery modes and all types of devices (Connected TV, set-top boxes, and personal mobile devices).

"There is immense value in developing technical standards and best practices to normalize data and create interoperability across all TV platforms," said Stephane Krzywoglowy, senior vice president, business operations & strategy, NBCUniversal. "Establishing interoperability across all distribution channels will streamline ad spend across any television audience, regardless of the delivery environment."

"VIZIO and network partners made incredible progress turning the concept of addressable delivery in linear for Connected TVs into a reality through our work with the Project OAR Consortium," said Ken Norcross, head of data licensing, Inscape, VIZIO's ACR division. "We are in support of the work the IAB Tech Lab is doing to broaden adoption for addressable advertising standards and are aligned with the mission of better, smarter TV advertising and the improved consumer experiences that come as a result."

IAB Tech Lab is calling on the industry to help steer the future of Advanced TV. To learn more about joining the Advanced TV Commit Group, email membership@iabtechlab.com. 

To view the Advanced TV Roadmap, visit https://iabtechlab.com/advancedTV.

SAN FRANCISCO—Market research firm Frost & Sullivan has released the findings of a new analysis assessing the capabilities of eight leading television data providers. The Television Viewership Data (TVD) companies were evaluated on more than 20 key criteria that brands, agencies and publishers are looking to assess as the market shifts to a multi-currency world. These capabilities include omniscreen reach and activation, depth of privacy compliant, first party data and the quality of currency grade measurement insights. The 2022 Frost Radar on Television Viewership Data Providers found Samba TV to be the leader in TV data capabilities.

“With companies in this market all having relatively large datasets, Frost & Sullivan believes that partner diversity and measurement capabilities truly separates top providers. Across 25 key attributes assessed for the 2022 Frost Radar: Television Viewership Data, no other company in the market today provides the range of partnerships and breadth of capabilities as Samba TV,” said Robert Cavin, Senior Consultant at Frost & Sullivan.

Frost & Sullivan’s analysis comes on the heels of Samba TV’s selection as Disney's first currency grade measurement partner earlier this year. The Disney announcement follows Samba's TV's significant international growth and a recent unveiling of the company's first of a kind incremental reach guarantee product for advertisers, guaranteeing marketers only pay for audiences that are incremental to their linear TV buys.

Samba TV’s capabilities were evaluated against 20 metrics aligned with five core pillars in the report. These included: diversity of viewership sources; linear and streaming measurement segments; technology portfolio; use cases, including ability to deliver advertising features to its customers, such as optimization as well as reach and frequency; and privacy values. Samba TV notably outpaced Inscape, iSpot.tv, LG Ads, Nielsen, Roku, Samsung Ads, and VideoAmp across these combined metrics, according to the Frost & Sullivan analysis.

“This latest industry analysis reaffirms Samba TV’s strong positioning in the marketplace as well as our commitment to providing the best-in-class experience for our customers with unmatched measurement capabilities,” said Samba TV CEO and Co-founder Ashwin Navin. “The TV data and measurement world has fundamentally changed and has embraced a new multi-currency future that empowers advertisers and publishers to truly understand their audiences and the impacts of advertising on both the biggest screen in the home and across every screen in the consumer journey. This is an exciting time for the industry and for Samba TV and we look forward to continuing to help shape the future of TV measurement and advertising globally.”

The full Frost & Sullivan report can be accessed online here.  The blog post from Frost & Sullivan’s Robert Cavin can be found here.

NEW YORK—Ampersand has announced the availability of its Total TV Measurement solution for advertisers and agencies. 

The solution offers brands as well as local advertisers the ability to unify and consolidate the measurement of audience-based media delivery across all of their TV investment channels – including network, spot and addressable–and carry out campaigns across Ampersand's full footprint of multiscreen TV supply, the company said. 

For local advertisers, the solution will provide them with reach, frequency and spend insights about their local broadcast investments. 

Ampersand noted that in today's fragmented television marketplace where viewers access programming in live and time shifted environments and on a variety of screens, it is difficult for brands and agencies to measure de-duplicated reach and frequency across the entirety of their multiscreen TV investments. As a result, it is difficult for brands to tell whether their target audience is being underserved or overserved. 

The Total TV Measurement solution is designed to help deal with this problem and offer brands insights that will help them optimize the performance of their TV investments, the company said. 

"Ampersand's Total TV measurement has empowered RPA and our clients with access to multi-screen insights, which was not possible before," said Brian McCord, senior vice president, executive director of media strategy at RPA, a Santa Monica-based advertising agency. "The learnings have been instrumental to our strategic planning team, enabling them to plan the most effective and efficient campaigns that drive real business outcomes for our clients. RPA uses this tool to navigate planning across all TV to ensure we understand the unique viewership of our target audience and can collaborate with our investment teams accordingly."

"One of the biggest pain points for CMOs in today's fragmented TV landscape lies in the difficulty of frequency management in service of a more efficient multiscreen TV investment strategy," added Ampersand president Andrew Ward. "We are excited to offer our Total TV analytics and measurement package to help advertisers finally understand who they are underserving or overserving across their multiscreen TV investment."

Ampersand's Total TV Measurement solution is available today as a managed service and will soon be available on Ampersand's AND Platform, the company said. 

The AND Platform is a buy-side TV platform that centralizes campaign planning, buying and measurement within a single interface, supporting local, addressable and national TV investment strategies.

NEW YORK—Nielsen and E.W. Scripps have announced a new multi-year deal that will have Nielsen provide its suite of measurement services to Scripps' local television stations.

Nielsen’s offerings include Local TV Measurement, Nielsen Scarborough, NLTV, Ad Intel, Arianna and Nielsen Grabix.

The Scripps stations covered as part of the deal includes its newly acquired Raycom, Cordillera and Tribune stations.

“We are thrilled to continue our longstanding relationship with Scripps and to collaborate on how best to monetize its key audiences using our unique suite of solutions,” said Catherine Herkovic, managing director and executive vice president at Scripps.

NEW YORK—The year-plus rollout of new measurement technology from Nielsen has been completed, the company announced on Thursday, Oct. 3. Nielsen has finalized additions of advanced meter technology, big data and people-powered panels to its local TV measurement service in 71 markets for in-depth and accurate metrics on what people are actually viewing in local broadcast markets.

With this latest batch of installments, plus the 137 markets that were updated in the summer of 2018, Nielsen has applied these changes to 208 local TV markets.

Nielsen had deployed Portable People Meter measurement integrated with existing TV panels in 25 Local People Meter and 19 Set-Meter markets, which according to Nielsen doubles the number of households and people in samples, on average, for local TV ratings. In the other 27 markets that have added these new services, 12 Set-Meter and 15 Code Reader markets will integrate return path data and National People Meter homes, resulting in an increased sample size of more than 2 million return path data households.

“The local TV environment has changed and the industry has long awaited developments in measurement that capture the myriad viewing preferences of our audiences,” said Wendy McMahon, president of ABC Owned Television Stations Group. “Nielsen’s Local TV measurement delivers greater accuracy and stability on the audience’s size and composition giving us a better understanding of audience behavior and delivering greater ROI to our advertisers.”

NEW YORK—It’s becoming harder to effectively measure the viewing habits of Millennials and Gen Xers (MGX)—those between 22 and 45— as around two-thirds of their TV and video content consumption is not being captured by current media measurement platforms, says a new report from Omnicom Media Group agency Hearts & Science.

MGXers spend an estimated 30 hours per week consuming TV and video content, but traditional TV platforms account for only 10 of those hours, per the report. The remaining content is viewed on other devices or streaming content on all devices. Measurement firms like Nielsen, comScore and Kantar can effectively measure those traditional TV screens, but are still working out how to measure content and ad exposure in-app on mobile and tablet devices, on OTT devices and through streaming services.

Nielsen has attempted to address this with its Digital Content Ratings Software Developer Kit, but it has had slow adoption as it requires integrating code to measure in-app content and ad-consumption on all platforms, devices and client app at the publisher’s expense. Nielsen’s digital TV ratings, which includes streaming TV content on these new platforms, struggles because the digital content and ad load must be identical to that of the original broadcast; ad content is usually changed as content crosses environments.

Meanwhile, 47 percent of MGXers report that they consume no content on traditional TV platforms. The study’s authors labeled such respondents as “unreachables,” as today’s TV measurement is not equipped to capture the whole story of this segment’s media consumption.

As a result of its findings, Hearts & Science calls for planning systems to be adjusted to account for the gaps in measurement data and to leverage new mobile datasets. They also suggested that agencies and marketers push for the adoption of SDKs that allow for these targets to be counted.

The full study is available for review here.

NEW YORK—Media General is sticking with its current dance partner when it comes to measuring local TV markets, signing a long-term renewal with Nielsen back in January. Nielsen will continue to provide its TV ratings service across all of Media General’s stations.

As part of the new agreement, Media General will also expand its subscription to Nielsen Local TV View to all of its stations. NLTV expands analysis of viewing within and across a station’s market, create custom trading areas to examine a target audience, or provide insights into sub-samples of their audience by a variety of characteristics. Stations can also report audiences across tablet, mobile and computers.

Media General owns and operates stations across 48 markets in the U.S.