首席执行官大卫-肯尼致客户的一封信
我写信通知您，媒体评级委员会（MRC）成员对我们的暂停请求做出了回应，投票决定暂停对我们的全国电视评级服务和地方电视评级服务的认证。
请放心，我们将继续提供最具代表性、最可靠、最稳健的受众测量，让市场可以继续放心地进行交易。在我们努力解决市场监测中心提出的问题的同时，我们认为，继续建设一个能够准确衡量和反映消费者跨平台旅程并跟上快速技术进步步伐的媒体未来也是至关重要的。
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.
为了恢复对尼尔森电视测量的认证，MRC 列举了这些需要补救的主要领域：
- 面板尺寸和维护需要恢复到目标水平
- 需要加强和测试业务连续性和恢复程序
- 记录和通报任何方法变化的程序需要更加透明和明确
- 尼尔森自 2013 年起沿用全国性测量方法，决定将仅使用宽带的家庭纳入本地测量，这被认为是暂停本地电视认证的主要原因。
我们理解并接受所提出的问题，这也是我们最近要求暂停评审以解决这些问题的原因。事实上，我们已经就这些问题采取了大量行动。以下是我们的进展报告和重要背景：
- 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.
随着消费者收视行为的不断变化，该行业面临的最大挑战是如何重新设计买卖双方对媒体进行核算和交易的方式，以确保实现库存货币化和投资最大化。为此，我们正在开发全国和地方电视解决方案，重点整合大数据，扩大流媒体和 CTV 的覆盖范围，并对我们的方法进行重要改进。其中包括将宽带家庭整合到我们的本地面板中，以便捕捉更多的流媒体印象，并在本地和全国范围内提供更高的可比性，最终实现跨媒体货币。这是我们测量解决方案的未来，也是我们未来每项决策的基石，以确保我们的客户能够像今天一样，在未来继续放心地使用我们的数据进行交易。
同时，我们也不能忽视行业的发展方向。我们专注于在四个关键领域发展我们的测量方法，以便在未来更好地为大家服务。
- 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.
我期待着就这些话题与你们继续对话，分享我们的补救进展，帮助行业更好地服务于多样化和技术化的受众，努力为所有人创造更美好的媒体未来。
戴维-肯尼
尼尔森首席执行官
