Devices

Disney’s ABC Network has become the latest TV network to sign up for Nielsen’s National Out-of-Home Reporting Service, according to a joint announcement by the companies Aug. 16.
The deal provides ABC with data including ratings for its programs and commercials that air during those shows when viewed away from participants’ homes on mobile and other devices regardless of location, whether the content is viewed live or time-shifted up to seven days later, the companies said.

Such data has become increasingly important for TV networks as a growing number of viewers opt to watch programs after they air live and outside the home on smartphones, tablets and other devices. Without standardized data that captures such ratings, it’s become tougher for TV networks to justify their ad pricing as the number of viewers watching TV on a traditional linear basis continues to shrink.

Earlier this year, Disney’s ESPN and ESPN2 became the first two networks across broadcast and cable to sign up for Nielsen’s out-of-home, opt-in syndicated service. Other networks that signed up for the service since then include Turner Sports, CNN and Fox Sports, Nielsen spokesman Gorki De Los Santos told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) Aug. 16.

So far, it’s apparently been paying off for Disney. The company has seen “some really good success by monetizing ESPN out of home,” Disney CEO Robert Iger told analysts on his company’s third-quarter earnings call Aug. 8. “We, obviously, haven’t taken advantage of” the relatively strong scatter ad “marketplace as much as we could have because of our ratings issues,” he said. The entire “traditional TV ecosystem is disadvantaged in terms of” ad sales due to 
“our lack of access to consumer data, and that’s something that we’ve got to improve,” he added.

The out-of-home data will provide ABC clients with a “true reflection of viewership across all screens,” Cindy Davis, EVP of Consumer Experience at the Disney ABC Television Group, said in an Aug. 16 news release announcing her company’s deal with Nielsen.

ABC joined a “growing list of television clients who have decided to incorporate Nielsen’s national out-of-home reporting into their business in order to benefit from the incremental audience lift that they will receive,” Peter Bradbury, managing director of Nielsen National Client Solutions, said in the news release. “As viewing continues to fragment across screens and devices, Nielsen is working diligently to ensure we can offer the most comprehensive view of media consumption possible,” he said, calling the National Out-of-Home Reporting Service a “key component of our measurement evolution and our plans to provide clients with flexible and powerful products that measure audiences regardless of where content is viewed.”

Nielsen is the “only measurement company that allows subscribers to see their combined in-home and out-of-home viewing,” it boasted in the announcement. The data from Nielsen’s National TV Ratings panel and the viewing away from the home captured by the Portable People Meter (PPM) provides clients with “a more holistic picture of their audiences” and the “incremental viewing that is derived from out-of-home tuning helps networks like ABC better strategize during the media planning and buying process and make more precise audience guarantees.” Nielsen said.

The opt-in service is the only elctronic and syndicated solution that measures both in-home and out-of-home audiences, it said, adding that the service uses Nielsen’s PPM technology from almost 77,000 installed panelists. The service uses a fusion methodology to combine the PPM footprint across 44 local TV markets with Nielsen’s national representative panel, allowing Nielsen to represent 65% of the TV U.S. household population to project what people are watching outside their homes, it said.