In a lot of ways, it’s similar: It involves panels, big data and technology to capture what people are doing online and who they are. As with TV, publishers use measurement to gauge the popularity of their content and value their ad inventory, and advertisers use it to verify that their campaigns are running and reaching their intended audience at the right frequency¹.

While the basic principles and ultimate objectives of TV and digital measurement are similar, the tools, processes and ecosystem involved are very different.

Let’s dive in to understand the nuances of how to measure digital audiences and campaigns.

What do we mean by ‘digital measurement’ anyway?

At the most basic level, digital measurement means monitoring a user’s exposure to ads and content delivered over the internet. When we talk about digital measurement in the media industry, we generally focus on two dominant digital experiences: walled gardens and the open web.²

The key difference between the two is that walled gardens restrict access to their first party data—you know, like a garden locked behind a wall—and the open web does not. Social media sites are an example of walled gardens, whereas sites and apps like Weather.com, Words With Friends and CNN are part of the open web.

This is an important distinction for measurement purposes: Technically, a walled garden should have a pretty clear idea of who is accessing content and seeing ads on its platform. But if other companies want to measure their ad or content consumption within these walled gardens, generally, they have to build custom integrations that are compliant with privacy regulations.

While websites on the open web can have robust and authenticated first party data, it’s not always a given. In those cases, general websites often rely on proxy IDs and other adtech solutions to identify, target and measure users.

Current industry challenges

On the open web, the ongoing deprecation of third-party cookies and device IDs is making it more difficult to identify users and is forcing stakeholders to rethink their measurement approach. Apple’s decision in 2021 to change default app tracking permissions (from opt-out to opt-in) wiped out three-fourths of IDFAs (Apple’s mobile ad IDs) from consideration. And Google is scheduled to phase out third-party cookies in the second half of 2024, the final blow to an ID system that held up for the most part, but was always an imperfect solution. Cookies aren’t people, after all.

For walled gardens, the practice of sharing granular subscriber data with outside parties is largely a thing of the past, even for anonymized measurement purposes. To comply with major data global privacy regulations, walled gardens are now sharing activity data with advertisers and measurement companies in aggregate form, if they’re sharing it at all.

Those are serious challenges for measurement that have forced the industry to look elsewhere for consumer identifiers, signals and attributes. And it all starts with an impression.

What’s a digital ‘impression’ exactly?

Before we get into the details of what a modern digital measurement process looks like, let’s spell out what an impression is.

Impressions measure the number of times an ad or piece of content was delivered to a digital device. While impressions give you the total volume of exposure to your ad or content, it does not measure how many people actually saw it. (That’s reach.) So, for example, if five people saw your LinkedIn ad twice, that means your campaign impressions would be 10. 

Current digital media viewability guidelines to qualify an impression stipulate that an ad must be at least 50% in focus on the user’s screen—not hidden behind another window, for example, or playing in the background—for at least 1 second for display ads and 2 consecutive seconds for video ads. Impression time and viewability thresholds now provide a robust foundation for advertisers and publishers to set the terms of their media transactions.

Now that we understand what digital activity we’re measuring, let’s get into how we measure it. 

5 key steps in the digital measurement process

At Nielsen, we look at digital measurement as a five-step process:

Moving toward cross-media measurement

The measurement industry is under heavy pressure to adapt to massive changes already underway in the digital ecosystem. Advertisers need a clear view of campaign performance across digital devices, confidence in the results, and reliable tools to optimize their campaigns in flight.

But there’s even more pressure to get digital and TV impressions on a level playing field. This is an ongoing effort—what constitutes an impression on linear TV and on digital platforms aren’t the same yet—but thanks to the development of a common ID system and launch of Nielsen ONE, we’re already helping marketers deduplicate reach and frequency across select digital and linear platforms in key markets around the world.

At Nielsen, we’ve also recently launched ‘Always On’ digital measurement with proactive partners like YouTube to emulate the way that linear measurement is done and help marketers turn on digital measurement capabilities on a continuous basis, rather than campaign-by-campaign.

There’s more work to be done for full cross-media measurement to become reality in our industry, but with the right priorities, tools and process in place, we’re closer than we’ve ever been.

Nielsen’s Need to Know reviews the fundamentals of audience measurement and demystifies the media industry’s hottest topics.

Sources

¹For an overview of TV measurement, read Need to Know: How Are TV Audiences Measured?
²Connected-TV platforms and retail media networks share many characteristics with both walled gardens and the open web. Stay tuned for a future Need to Know article on those fast-growing media channels.
³The Nielsen software development kit (SDK) is one of multiple framework SDKs that Nielsen provides to measure both static and video content across platforms.
⁴Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings estimate that 37% of digital ad spend is currently wasted on impressions that are off-target, out-of-view or SIVT.

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As one of Europe’s leading operators and a world leader in converged broadband, video and mobile communications, Liberty Global needed an entertainment metadata powerhouse to help create its next-generation entertainment platform, Horizon 4, as it rolled out across 85 million subscribers. Nielsen’s Gracenote first partnered on metadata for Liberty Global’s UK business, Virgin Media, in 2010, and has gone on to power metadata solutions across the operator’s markets, completing its support for Horizon 4 in early 2023. 

Download the case study to learn how Liberty Global and Gracenote are aggregating metadata to deliver the next chapter in immersive, content-led visual experiences. 

The post Liberty Global’s metadata journey to super-aggregation with Gracenote appeared first on Nielsen.

In this case study, TikTok commissioned a syndicated Market Mix Model (MMM) study with Nielsen to investigate what impact its full-funnel immersive ad solutions have on driving sales and ROAS across the CPG category. Using Nielsen’s Marketing Mix Modeling solution, TikTok uncovered data-driven insights on how brands can maximize ROAS. Here is what Jorge Ruiz, TikTok’s Head of Measurement had to say:

Methodology: The syndicated MMM solution methodology utilizes “Ad Intel” data sourced via a third party supplier to provide estimate spends for the other publishers to be used within the model. Ad-Intel captures the data through: own registration, media declaration and crawler technology. The model leverages multivariate regression, aligning the media and other drivers to define how sales change based on fluctuations of each driver.  A ‘lift factor’ is mathematically ascribed to each of these drivers (aka coefficients or elasticities) and define how much sales change as a result of each individual driver. Nielsen measured the ROAS & Effectiveness of TikTok Ad spend at a granular level. 

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Nielsen ID resolution system utilizes persistent, device-agnostic identifiers, enabling Nielsen to verify demographic characteristics and media exposure over time across all media. With Nielsen’s attribution solution, Barceló was able to uncover unattributed conversations and redistribute the credit across paid and organic channels. Barceló is able to effectively monitor campaigns daily, test unlimited budget allocation scenarios, optimize its advertising spend and activation strategy across media channels.

The post Uncover the complex customer journey with modern attribution measurement appeared first on Nielsen.

Au cours de ces dernières années, les spécialistes du marketing ont de plus en plus misé sur l’attrait du « Brand Purpose Advertising » pour attirer l’attention des consommateurs, mais quels sont réellement les résultats de cette nouvelle façon de communiquer ?

Cette tendance publicitaire s’explique par les préoccupations croissantes des consommateurs en matière d’éthique ainsi que de leurs attentes sur le fait que les marques soient socialement responsables. Selon une enquête de NielsenIQ France, plus de 75 %* des consommateurs ont déclaré que le packaging écoresponsable, le bien-être des animaux et la responsabilité sociale des entreprises sont des facteurs importants dans leurs décisions de consommation.

C’est pour ces raisons, que les marques veulent intégrer ces valeurs dans leur communication. Par conséquent, le nombre de publicités faisant référence au « Brand Purpose » ou à la responsa-bilité sociale a augmenté de près de 250%** au cours de ces 5 dernières années, l’année 2020 connaissant la plus forte accélération.

Alors, quel est l’impact sur les ventes ? Quelle est l’efficacité de cette nouvelle tendance ? Comment se compare-t-elle à la publicité conventionnelle axée sur les caractéristiques du produit ?

Téléchargez notre document pour obtenir des réponses à ces questions. Vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur le Brand Purpose Advertising ? Nos experts se feront un plaisir de vous répondre !

*Source : NielsenIQ France – Panel View basé sur le panel de consommateurs HomeScan | 9 932 réponses du 11 au 22 déc. 2020
**Source : Nielsen Ad Intel – France, juillet 2016 – juin 2021, catégories PGC, médias traditionnels (TV, affichage, radio, presse)

Methodology

Pour répondre à cette question, Nielsen a exploité une base de données comprenant 15 modèles de marketing mix (MMM). Dans chaque étude réalisée entre 2017 et 2020 pour le compte de marques de Grande Consommation en France, des campagnes dites « Purpose » et d’autres axées sur le produit ont été modélisées. Un MMM est par ailleurs une régression bayésienne qui permet de décomposer les ventes par magasin et par semaine, à travers des leviers commerciaux, mar-keting et d’autres facteurs externes, mesurant ainsi précisément l’efficacité (ventes / exposition media) et le ROI (ventes par euro investi dans les médias) de chaque campagne étudiée.

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Brands in Southeast Asia (SEA) knocked it out of the park on TikTok in 2021. With more than 240 million users in the region creating over 800 million videos and generating over one trillion views, the platform saw marketers lean into the opportunity to boost brand awareness and engagement.

In this case study, we look at how TikTok for Business’ suite of full-funnel, immersive ad solutions delivers a positive return on advertising spend (ROAS) of up to US$2.6. Using Nielsen’s Marketing Mix Modeling solution, TikTok uncovered data-driven insights on how brands can maximize ROAS. Here is what Jorge Ruiz, TikTok’s Head of Measurement had to say:

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Understanding the opportunity, FOX’s challenge was to address the growing advertiser demand forcross platform audience targeting—especially CTV—at scale.

Source: (1) Nielsen Total Audience Report, 2021 (2) eMarketer, Connected TV Ad Spending, U.S., 2021-2025

The post Case study: Marketing Cloud takes FOX Next to the next level appeared first on Nielsen.

To increase the brand awareness within the professionals in the Italian health sector for Inofolic, by Li.Lo Pharma, the agency Digital Angels designed two audience-driven campaigns that were executed on social networks.

Aiming to reach the specific groups in the pharmaceutical industry online, Digital Angels and Li.Lo Pharma collaborate with Nielsen Marketing Cloud to build tailored audiences. Nielsen audiences performed very well in both social campaigns.

The post Nielsen audience activation on social campaigns appeared first on Nielsen.

To facilitate the introduction of Styler Steamer to the market, a premium innovation of home appliances for a better life by LG, the agency PHD reached out to Nielsen Marketing Cloud to build a tailored audience. Nielsen’s rich audience segmentation covers demographics, psychographics, online, TV, behavioural, spending and social. 

PHD took on a mini-funnel approach. Using the optimised video views, it targeted high intent users of the home steamer to drive awareness in the campaign. PHD tested Nielsen audiences alongside interest-based audiences. The Nielsen audience drove the strongest results and helped populate the most relevant retargeting audience, a key to driving traffic and sales.

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聯成電腦本次的廣告目標，希望能蒐集更多年輕族群名單以擴大年輕學員規模。其代理商夥伴adGeek艾得基客行銷顧問股份有限公司透過結合尼爾森NMC第三方廣告受眾數據，協助客戶於數位廣告的市場中，觸及到新的潛在客群；且以更符合成本效益的方式有效取得消費者的聯繫資訊。

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