NEW YORK—Nielsen has released data from its co-viewing pilot for February’s top live televised events that shows an average +4.19% lift in total viewers.
The data covered the following major live events: the Super Bowl; the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics; the NBA All-Star Game; the Daytona 500; the Olympics closing ceremony and men’s hockey gold medal game; and the State of the Union address.
For the pilot, Nielsen leveraged state-of-the-art wearable devices to more accurately capture shared viewing.
The co-viewing results from the pilot program will not be included in the final and official Big Data + panel ratings for Nielsen clients and, as a result, will not be considered “currency” that advertisers can transact on.
But Nielsen said it plans to have the co-viewing methodology enhancement fully implemented into its suite of media intelligence products, with a goal to incorporate it into “currency” measurement for the 2026-2027 TV season.
“Our co-viewing pilot exemplifies our unwavering commitment to providing the most accurate measurement for our clients during these dynamic times of change,” Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao said. “In the past year alone, we’ve made continued enhancements to our ratings to better reflect the power of live TV in reaching massive audiences.”
Nielsen’s co-viewing enhancement layers in panelists using wearable devices inside of the home. Those wearable devices were not previously applied to the co-viewing modeling, as Nielsen has been introducing more high-tech wearables into its panel.
