Nielsen’s ‘Digital in TV Ratings’ wins MRC accreditation

With many people watching television on the web these days, audience measurement service Nielsen launched its Digital in TV Ratings in 2015 to keep track of those viewers.

This week, the Media Rating Council granted accreditation for including that service in TV ratings. Nielsen said this is the first measurement of viewers watching TV on computers and mobile devices to receive such an acknowledgement.

The service uses Nielsen’s methodology, which includes census data, demographics and opt-in panels of users. The viewers across all devices are captured, but only if the programming seen online has the same content and commercials as the airing on broadcast or cable.

The accreditation is the latest step in online TV’s evolution toward full data citizenship in the land of marketing.

Earlier this week, for instance, mParticle released a single software development kit (SDK) so that TV programming apps on Roku — such as Hulu, HBO Now or Sony’s ad-supported service Crackle — can track user and activity data and employ that info in more than a hundred third-party marketing and analytics tools.

Previously, mParticle said, the data capabilities for programming apps on Roku — some of which carried the kind of programming that Nielsen is measuring — were very rudimentary.

Last week, OTT audience measurement firm Tru Optik announced a partnership with global research agency Kantar Millware Brown, where an advertiser can track an offline purchase to an ad served on a connected TV. These ads could be the same ones offered on-air or on cable, and this capability is not one that on-air/cable TV services can readily provide.