Una lettera ai nostri clienti da parte di David Kenny, Amministratore delegato
Vi scrivo per informarvi che i membri del Media Rating Council (MRC) hanno risposto alla nostra richiesta di pausa con un voto che sospende l'accreditamento del nostro servizio di rating televisivo nazionale e del servizio di rating televisivo locale.
Siamo certi che continueremo a fornire la misurazione dell'audience più rappresentativa, affidabile e solida disponibile, sulla quale il mercato potrà continuare a operare con fiducia. Mentre lavoriamo per risolvere i problemi sollevati dall'MRC, riteniamo che sia fondamentale continuare a costruire un futuro mediatico che misuri e rifletta accuratamente il viaggio multipiattaforma dei consumatori e che stia al passo con i rapidi progressi tecnologici.
We know that the role we play is critical to your business – and the industry as a whole. We want to be transparent about the factors the MRC called out in their decision, the actions we are taking to address outstanding issues and the ongoing work we’re doing to build a new measurement model that reflects where the industry is going.
L'MRC ha citato queste aree principali che devono essere corrette per ripristinare l'accreditamento della misurazione televisiva di Nielsen:
- Le dimensioni del pannello e la manutenzione devono tornare ai livelli target
- I processi di continuità operativa e di ripristino devono essere rafforzati e testati.
- Il processo di registrazione e comunicazione di qualsiasi modifica dei metodi deve essere più trasparente e chiaro.
- La decisione di Nielsen di includere le case a banda larga nella misurazione locale, seguendo la metodologia utilizzata nella misurazione nazionale dal 2013, è stata citata come motivo principale per la sospensione dell'accreditamento delle TV locali.
Comprendiamo e accettiamo i problemi esposti, ed è per questo che abbiamo recentemente richiesto una pausa nell'accreditamento per affrontarli. In realtà, abbiamo già intrapreso azioni considerevoli su questi punti. Ecco un resoconto dei nostri progressi e un contesto importante:
- Panel size and health. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, we prioritized the health and safety of our panelists and our employees. A key decision we made at the time was to not enter panelists’ homes. This decision was designed to protect the health and safety of our panelists and employees and followed CDC and local government guidelines. The by-product hindered recruitment of new panelists and maintenance of existing panelist technology, resulting in a decrease in panel size. With increasing vaccination rates in 2021, we have been able to resume in-home visits, allowing us to troubleshoot issues and add 2,500 homes since March 2021. We have further accelerated our panel recovery efforts to meet the contract install target of 41,600 homes by Q1 2022 and further expand the sample by 15% by Q2 2023.
- Continuity. Nielsen has long had a business continuity plan in place for unforeseen events such as the loss of power or computing resources. However, we admittedly had not considered an unprecedented global pandemic with extended restrictions on in-home visits in our planning. We have since added this scenario to our procedures and now have systems in place to allow greater remote recruiting and monitoring.
- Reporting. We were not as fast nor were we as transparent as we could have been in reporting issues with our panel resulting from the decision not to enter homes at the start of the pandemic. We understand how critical our data is to our clients and the industry, and have put new policies in place to ensure we communicate more frequently. To assist in this, we will work with the MRC to create a subcommittee with which we will share the details of methodological or procedural changes and provide guidance on general marketplace disclosure. In addition, we have increased the quality control functions on both data input and output to better assess the impact of any changes in the future.
- Broadband only. Broadband only homes are an important audience now representing nearly 30% of TV households in some local markets. We believe it is critical to include them in local measurement as soon as possible, but we agree that we need to move to an explicit universe estimate. Their exclusion to-date means a gap and bias in measurement and we have been and continue to commit to integrating them in a responsible way. Over the next few weeks, we will work with the MRC to refine and audit universe estimates for weighting and sample controls which will provide safeguards to ensure broadband only, cable and over-the-air homes are properly represented in our panel.
Poiché i comportamenti dei consumatori continuano a cambiare, la sfida più grande per il settore è quella di reimmaginare il modo in cui gli acquirenti e i venditori contabilizzano e transano sui media, per garantire la monetizzazione dei loro inventari e la massimizzazione degli investimenti. In risposta, stiamo lavorando alle nostre soluzioni per le TV nazionali e locali e ci stiamo concentrando sull'integrazione dei big data, sull'espansione dello streaming e della copertura CTV e sui miglioramenti critici delle nostre metodologie. Tra questi, l'integrazione delle case a banda larga nei nostri panel locali, per catturare un maggior numero di impressioni di streaming e offrire una maggiore comparabilità tra locale e nazionale, che alla fine si tradurrà in una valuta cross-mediale. Questo è il futuro delle nostre soluzioni di misurazione e sarà alla base di ogni decisione che prenderemo in futuro per garantire che i nostri clienti possano continuare a operare con fiducia sui nostri dati in futuro, come fate voi oggi.
Allo stesso tempo, non possiamo perdere di vista la direzione che il settore sta prendendo. Siamo concentrati sull'evoluzione della nostra misurazione in quattro aree chiave, per poter servire meglio tutti voi nel futuro.
- Evolve measurement to reflect how people are truly consuming media. At Nielsen, our responsibility is to accurately measure how consumers behave. As new platforms and technologies emerge, we must act quickly to create new tracking models and work with the industry to integrate them into existing measurement solutions as noted above.
- Ensure inclusion and representation of all people in audience measures. Nielsen has long benefited from an external advisory council which helps ensure we live up to our purpose of powering a better media future for all people. One of the reasons for validating census data with a robust panel is to ensure full representation. We will continue to challenge ourselves to do this at Nielsen, and we encourage the industry to work to make sure that media is measured and audited in a manner that serves the fast-changing demographics.
- Enable true comparability across all platforms and deduplicate audiences. We understand that comparability across platforms and deduplicated audiences are the holy grail for marketers and advertisers. That’s why we’re putting tremendous energy and investment into a new measurement approach, called Nielsen ONE, which will dramatically simplify measurement to a single, de-duplicated cross-media metric. We are confident in our vision, have made significant progress and are on track to deliver parallel data in Q4 2022. We believe strongly that the industry as a whole – including the MRC and all its members – would be well-served to embrace this cross-media future regardless of how uncomfortable it may feel in the near-term. Doing so will greatly benefit consumers and the industry in the long-term.
- Embrace the most advanced data science. We must always push ourselves to embrace the latest technological capabilities, including cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence, to build entirely new and forward-looking forms of measurement that are adaptable and resilient to technology and privacy changes. We at Nielsen are working to lead the industry in embracing this new future while we work to resolve current issues.
We know how much you and the larger industry rely on the work we do. I want to personally let you know that we are working hard to address the issues laid out above and that we will be fully transparent in reporting on our progress. We welcome you to hold us accountable to our commitments – and fully expect you’ll do so.
Nielsen remains committed to working alongside the MRC and we fully support the audit process. At the same time, please know that we are not going to stop innovating and building the measurement platform for the future. We ask the industry to support and collaborate with us on these efforts.
Sono ansioso di continuare a dialogare con voi su questi temi, condividendo i nostri progressi di risanamento e aiutando il settore a servire meglio un pubblico eterogeneo e tecnologicamente potenziato, mentre lavoriamo per costruire un futuro mediatico migliore per tutti.
David Kenny
CEO, Nielsen
