Finding the Customer

Inside the TV Industry’s Numbers-Crunching to Build Its Multicurrency Future

With upfronts looming, there’s a new set of measurement obstacles to navigate this year

a tv with an eye in the screen, with measuring tape wrapped around it — Several major publishers have said that in this year’s upfront, they're incorporating alternative currencies in addition to Nielsen Kacy Burdette

When Nielsen, long viewed as the standard for measurement, lost its third-party accreditation status through the Media Rating Council in 2021, the TV industry—already reeling from the pandemic—was thrown into even more chaos. Publishers and marketers publicly began grappling with the urgent need to develop measurement alternatives and new currencies—just as audience behavior had begun rapidly shifting from linear to streaming.

“Covid-19 completely changed people’s consumption habits from an entertainment standpoint,” said Jen Faraci, chief data officer, Digitas North America.