While At NBCU Linda Yaccarino Demanded Better Audience Measurement

During her tenure at NBCU, ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino who will soon become CEO of Twitter, was among the first ad sales executives to repeatedly and vocally advocate for improving audience measurement. Her complaints, primarily directed at Nielsen
NLSN
, coincided with advertisers starting to allocate a greater portion of their budget to digital media. Some of her comments were made at such high-profile events as the CES and during Advertising Week. At one-point Yaccarino referenced audience measurement as being in a “crisis”. Another time she said, “We Can’t Wait for Nielsen Any Longer”. Yaccarino also referenced to a “lack of leadership” at Nielsen.

Among the issues Yaccarino had been critical were; no out-of-home measurement, inadequate sample size, lengthy turnaround time for basic ratings delivery and no reliable cross-platform measurement tool available.

Back in 2015 to underscore her dissatisfaction with Nielsen, Yaccarino replaced them with Cogent Reports to measure business news network CNBC. Yaccarino cited Nielsen’s inability to measure any out-of-home viewing such as offices, gyms and trading room floors, locations, where oftentimes, CNBC viewing takes place. At another time, NBCU estimated that because of Nielsen, between 12% to 30% of total audience goes unmeasured. (It wasn’t until September 2020 that Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing to their ratings.)

Also, when Nielsen announced the expansion of its nationwide household sample from 25,000 households to 40,000, Yaccarino said it was still not enough. Again, citing CNBC, the ad sales director noted the cable networks ratings have been based on just nine households. With such a tiny sample “God forbid one of those guys goes on vacation in the summer – my rating goes down 20%. Yaccarino pointed out that (at the time), NBCU’s parent company Comcast
CMCSA
, had 23 million set top boxes which would provide better data? (For 2023-24 Nielsen recently announced they would continue to be using their household panel of 42,000 for negotiating.)

Yaccarino was also critical of the three-week turnaround time it took to get C3 (and C7) ratings. (Since 2007, the basis for most ad buying negotiations was C3 ratings which measured commercial ratings audiences within three days of its first airing.) Despite the long turn-around time, advertisers receive only basic ratings information (i.e., gender and age) which are incomplete and she described as nearly useless. At the same time digital media had been providing marketers with a treasure trove of data with a shorter turnaround time.

Yaccarino also took on the deficiencies of digital media. At the 2017 NBC upfront, Yaccarino, in front of hundreds of advertisers, she commented that digital media has had a brand safety issue that is not being addressed. In addition, she noted media measurement is also severely lacking. She commented, “We don’t get to grade our own homework. I mean, what the hell is a ‘view’ anyway? Has a ‘view’ ever bought any of your products? Has a ‘like’ ever walked into a store?” Previously, she commented that Facebook had claimed they had more 18-to-24 users than actually exist. She also said, “If NBC was delivering nonhuman traffic, was involved in any type of the fraud or what we would call the underbelly of the business, we would be testifying in Washington.” Soon thereafter however, Yaccarino reached out to Google and Facebook to attend a conference to address the measurement issues.

In early 2016 Nielsen began working on a new syndication cross-platform measurement product; Total Content Ratings. TCR was designed to measure all video audiences across all sources. In December 2016 Nielsen began providing subscribers with their own internal data, with plans of going live on March 1, 2017, in time for the 2017-18 upfront. While a number of content providers and ad agencies endorsed TCR, NBCU did not.

Ad Age reported Linda Yaccarino had sent a letter to Nielsen asking the launch of TCR be delayed citing the new product is incomplete. Yaccarino cited a lack of total industry participation in the product (i.e., Hulu) and the “disparate digital data collection methods using a mix of panel, census and custom measurement (YouTube) that is not yet vetted.” While endorsing the need for a comprehensive cross-platform measurement tool, Yaccarino noted, “Some say, ‘something is better than nothing.’ We disagree. Bad, inaccurate and misleading data is far worse than no data at all.” Without NBCU and its estimated $10 billion in ad revenue, the roll-out of TCR was severely debilitated.

No longer waiting for Nielsen, in 2018 NBCU developed their own cross-platform measurement tool with the introduction of CFlight. NBCU called it “the industry’s first unified advertising metric.” CFlight provide marketers with how and where their ads were being viewed. The idea was to offer advertisers a new negotiating currency along with audience guarantees. Yaccarino said, “Consumer behavior has changed the way our content is consumed, and it’s time for metrics to catch up and show the true power of premium video.” At the time, NBCU had one-third of their long-form video content viewed on over-the-top platforms.

As Nielsen faced audience measurement challenges from various ad tech companies, in December 2020 the measurement company announced its latest cross-platform measurement initiative; Nielsen One. Yaccarino was an early supporter. She cited how Saturday Night Live watched on NBC and watched on Peacock and YouTube with other devices, would benefit from the additional viewing reported. Delayed one year, Nielsen ONE
ONE
is expected to be fully operational in time for next year’s upfront.

The following year with Nielsen having their MRC accreditation suspended, NBCU convened a meeting of ad agencies, prominent advertisers and trade groups to review proposals from dozens of audience measurement companies (including Nielsen). Linda Yaccarino said, “One company with one metric and one currency is probably unlikely in the future.” Adding “We’re very, very bullish on the fact that all key stakeholders have jumped in. We need to come together.”

In 2021 NBCU hosted their first annual pre-upfront conference providing a forum to the advertising community on measurement. The event highlighted the partnerships NBCU has made with ad tech companies, their use of first-party data and how best to enhance targeting. At the 2023 event, NBCU even invited rival media companies to its forum including Paramount
PARA
and UnivisionTelevisa. Rival media companies have also been holding their own measurement conferences.

With Linda Yaccarino’s departure one of her lasting legacies will be having ad sales directors becoming protagonists in working to improve audience measurement. Last month’s so-called “Joint Industry Committee” included several ad sales directors in attendance. That wasn’t always the case.