Nielsen Facing Criticism Over Accuracy Of Streaming Video Ratings

I have written many stories about the widespread belief by most of the major media companies that the Nielsen TV ratings are inaccurate. And with their accreditation stripped by the Media Ratings Council, it has left many wondering how the upfront sales of advertising for the upcoming TV season will be priced since they are typically based on an estimated Nielsen Rating.

Although many media companies have said they will use alternatives to Nielsen in the upfronts, AdAge estimates that only a high-single-digit percentage of ad sales will be sold based on something other than a projected Nielsen rating. Many believe that threats from ad sellers of going to competitors to Nielsen are just designed to get pricing leverage from the ratings giant.

With Nielsen in the process of being sold to a number of private equity players including Elliott Management Corp., the new owners are going to have a number of serious issues to address if they want to regain the trust of media companies subscribing to their ratings services.

The latest criticism comes in the form of widespread stories that Nielsen’s streaming estimates are inaccurate. Fueled by complaints by NexTV who said that Nielsen’s Weekly Streaming Top 10 report showed conspicuously low numbers for the film “Don’t Look Up” given that Netflix itself had been touting that the film broke records for viewership.

The film had more than 152 million hours of viewership on Netflix in the week ending January 2, a record high for the most weekly hours viewed for a film on Netflix, according to a spokeswoman for the company. Nielsen responded that a number of programs, including “Don’t Look Up” had been under-credited, admitting viewership for its premier week were three times what was originally reported.

In Nielsen’s defense, Netflix has historically not cooperated with outside ratings services, preferring to report viewing numbers themselves. This allows them to put their own spin on the viewership numbers in their press releases, with high points highly touted and low points not reported on at all.

Since last November, they started reporting a Top Ten list of shows ranked by hours of viewership globally. Although this gives Nielsen and the media a view of which shows are the most popular, the metric is apples to oranges to Nielsen, which reports domestic minutes of viewing.

Still, with Nielsen trying to get the industry to adopt a combined metric of streaming and traditional TV viewing, this will just make it more difficult for them to get widespread support for their Nielsen ONE platform given that it’s well known there are problems with the accuracy of both their television and streaming ratings.