In late December, Nielsen dropped a bit of a news bomb that their out-of-home modeling and measuring had undercounted viewership to a bigger degree than previously thought.
Now, one trade group has an estimate as to just how much money that may have cost networks in ad revenue: $350 million.
That’s according to a report from the Video Advertising Bureau, which notes that Black and Hispanic markets were especially undercounted. Jack Neff had details at AdAge:
The VAB said Nielsen’s recount so far shows $350 million in lost network revenue and suggests the overall total will be more than $700 million.\Nielsen has since reprocessed half of the 16 months in question, according to the VAB, and the results show a far bigger impact than previously disclosed.
Overall, the reprocessed months so far indicate a loss of $350 million in ad revenue for networks, according to the VAB, and since those months represent less than half the total undercount period, the group estimates the total impact at more than $700 million.
The undercount resulted in 30 billion ad impressions disappearing from May through December 2021, including 10.5 billion among people 18-34. Of those 30 billion lost impressions, a disproportionate 7 billion were ads seen by Black viewers, and 5.5 billion were seen by Hispanic viewers. Black and Hispanic people made up close to 42% of the lost impressions, compared to making up 31% of the overall U.S. population in the 2020 Census.