Nielsen rolls out meters to replace paper diaries

It is the latest stage in its strategy to have universal electronic TV measurement in all 210 local TV markets to overcome the limitations of solely using set-top box data for measuring audiences.

Kelly Abcarian, senior vice-president, Nielsen Product Leadership, said: “We’ve made great strides to incorporate data from set-top-boxes into our local TV measurement, however, in that process we’ve uncovered significant challenges with the data.

“To solve for these limitations, especially measuring growing audiences viewing via over-the-air broadcast, we looked at multiple solutions including online recruited panels and quick-query surveys. Ultimately, we concluded that only Nielsen’s proven TV audience meters allow us to address the challenges that come with set-top-box data.”

As of February 2017, more than 25% of viewing to broadcast stations in the 140 markets measured today by diaries came from over-the-air tuning. The market with the highest level was at 50% over-the-air. The meters will also validate set-top-box data by serving as the truth-set to compare against and deliver actual persons-level viewing.