The new tool is called the Measurement Innovation Metric (MIM), and the partners say that every campaign tested by the new service will be allocated a MIM score that allows advertisers to measure campaign effectiveness.

Nielsen will survey 3,000 online respondents to determine viewer loyalty and engagement to TV networks. This information will be supported by data from Nielsen’s national people meter ratings data to determine actual network viewerships.

The second part of the MIM score examines viewer ad receptivity, which is broken down into two categories. The first establishes whether a viewer is open to watching TV commercials, or do they – for example – fast forward past them. The second part measures how the advertising fits overall within a network’s brand environment.

Sundance and Nielsen then merge the engagement and ad receptivity scores to generate the overall MIM score, which measures how effective an advert is across multiple networks.

Daniel Marcu, Sundance’s vice president of research said: “Rather than measuring viewership alone, MIM uses a mix of quantitative and qualitative data to gauge the overall effectiveness of a campaign. While ‘ROI’ and ‘engagement’ have been buzzwords in the last few years, we’re excited to be the first to introduce an actual metric that proves both.”