Nielsen reportedly once again pressing to use Amazon’s numbers despite industry pushback

If it first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

That’s the tack Nielsen is reportedly taking with its effort to incorporate Amazon’s audience data into their own reporting numbers. According to Variety, the measurement company is renewing its push to allow first-party data to be part of its overall offerings despite the intense pushback it received from networks and broadcasters the first time around.

Last year, Amazon would routinely balk at Nielsen’s audience numbers for Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football, claiming that their internal data showed millions more viewers each week. In August, Nielsen announced it would begin incorporating viewing data from streaming services for live programming.

That set TV network executives and their trade group, the Video Advertising Bureau, off, as they voiced very public complaints about what they perceived as special treatment for Amazon.

“Nielsen is about to sacrifice its most valuable attribute – impartiality – to benefit one client, one program, and one content supplier, said Mike Mulvihill, Fox’s president, insights and analytics. “Reckless, wrongheaded, and a slap in the face to the largest Nielsen clients and NFL partners.”

“A fair and accurate audience measurement, across all platforms, as you know, is absolutely vital to our industry. Anything that is not impartial and unbiased is unacceptable to us,” added CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus. “I must say that we think it’s extremely odd and unfortunate that different rules are suddenly applying to one platform. I’ll leave it at that statement.”

Nielsen eventually backed off the effort, though not before sparring publically with VAB about their “misleading and inaccurate” complaints about TNF measurement.

However, less than two months after acquiescing, Variety’s Brian Steinberg reports that Nielsen execs are once again floating the possibility of using first-party data.

“At a meeting held by the Media Rating Council on Thursday, Nielsen executives tried to introduce the prospect once more, according to three people familiar with the proceedings,” wrote Steinberg. “People familiar with the gathering, conducted over Zoom, were dismayed by Nielsen’s inability to respond to criticism about the technology that has been raised weeks ago. TV networks believe Nielsen hopes that the MRC, an industry body that grants accreditation for the use audience measures, could soon put the concept to a vote of approval.”

The concern that critics of the arrangement have is that not only would it mean Amazon could potentially control its audience numbers, but the independent company charged with reporting fairly would now be in a partnership with one of the organizations it is supposed to oversee, raising all kinds of ethical concerns.

One source told Variety that the new system could also give a boost to live programming over scripted shows, which would be a major issue with Hollywood unions.

Given that Amazon’s data is routinely higher than Nielsen’s, the NFL is very much in favor of seeing the streamer’s numbers incorporated.

[Variety]