In December, marketing research firm Nielsen admitted that it had been undercounting “out-of-home” audiences for national TV programming since monitoring that viewership in September 2020.
Nearly a month later, how much money Nielsen’s error cost TV networks in advertising revenue has been estimated by a different research firm. According to the Video Advertising Bureau (as reported by TheWrap), which represents the major TV networks for advertisers, $700 million worth of unsold ad time was lost because of Nielsen.
That number is based on 60 billion lost TV impressions, according to VAB’s research and a task force the firm hired to examine the out-of-home data Nielsen said it undercounted over a 16-month span.
During an eight-month period that from May to December 2021, VAB’s study determined that Nielsen didn’t count nearly 30 billion ad impressions. That resulted in more than $350 million in advertising that networks couldn’t sell.
You can view the VAB report here.
“The only thing worse than Nielsen’s admitted error of 65 consecutive weeks of undercounting TV viewing was their claim of ‘no impact to minimal impact’ from that blunder,“ said VAB president and CEO Sean Cunningham (via Broadcasting + Cable).
“We now know that error is tracking towards 60 billion lost TV impressions and $700 million worth of TV ads that marketers couldn’t buy because of Nielsen’s second admitted case of 2020-2021 pervasive undercounting.”
Nielsen stood by its previous assessment that its error had little effect on TV networks’ revenue.
“We reviewed the information shared by the VAB today,” Nielsen said in a statement to TheWrap, “and while we acknowledge the understatement in a portion of our National out-of-home audiences, we stand by our prior statements that the magnitude of the issue was very small for the majority of telecasts.”
Those findings likely won’t appease TV network executives who were already unhappy with Nielsen for delaying its rollout of out-of-home viewership measure. Nielsen cited the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for the delay, but it looks more apparent that Nielsen knew it wasn’t ready to count out-of-home numbers properly.
Last August, Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav publicly criticized Nielsen in an investor call.
“I don’t have a lot of hope for Nielsen,” Zaslav said, according to the New York Times. “I think somehow, as an industry, we’re just going to have to work our way out of it from a technology perspective and leave them in the dust.”
VAB’s study quantifying a $700 million loss in ad revenue is sure to increase such a sentiment.
