Nielsen and Gemius expanded the TV audience measurement though the out of home TV viewing last year. To do so, Nielsen put in place a fusion process based on the audience of its at home panel and Gemius panel collecting out of home TV viewing.
MOC TV required CESP, international media measurement auditor, to evaluate this new measurement solution last year.
This audit program is divided in 2 parts: data collection conducted by Gemius and data fusion deployed by Nielsen. The audit of the Gemius out of home TV audience collection was released in September. Following this first part of the audit program, Olivier Daufresne, Associate Director of CESP and Agnieszka Gosiewska Managing Director Nielsen jointly shared the conclusions of the fusion audit and Nielsen action plan on December 9th, 2022. This audit is based on the fusion process in place and audiences between February and April 2022.
As brief summary, CESP considers the fusion process to deliver aggregated at home + out of home audience as satisfactory in particular:
- The sizes of the two panels that have been increased and that are compatible at total level to conduct the fusion
- The methodological process deployed for the linking of the current variables used for the fusion
- The matching algorithm that ensures an efficient fusion in terms of usage of donors and quality of pairing individuals
However, CESP auditors highlight areas of improvement of the current fusion process:
- Improving the preservation of the out of home audience structure after fusion
- Investigating the possibility to fully preserve the out of home TV channel ranking after fusion
In addition, CESP recommends Nielsen and Gemius working together on collective areas of improvement:
- Aligning the two panel universes for example by excluding of the fusion the individuals living in households without TV set in Gemius panel
- Defining the main variables that impact the out of home TV viewing and used them to control both panels
- Aiming at better homogeneity of donors to receivers’ ratios regarding some age groups
Finally, CESP reminds that a fusion is a mathematical solution to evaluate a reality. So, CESP recommends Nielsen to establish in full transparency with the industry:
- The level of error tolerance accepted for a media currency
- Based on this tolerance, the impact on the main target groups used by the media industry
- The list of target groups to be used for analysis and trading on fused audience results
Olivier Daufresne concluded this audit saying: “The accuracy of a fusion is directly linked to the data fueling the solution and to the statistical process in place. This Nielsen recent solution appears satisfactory to deliver aggregated at home + out of home audience. CESP identified a room of improvement linked to the 2 panels used for the fusion that will probably improve the fusion results. Moreover, all fused audience must be used according to the accepted tolerance of error defined in transparency with the media industry.”
Agnieszka Gosiewska – Managing Director Nielsen: “We are glad that the results of the audit showed that the methodology we use for OOH data fusion is of high quality. Of course, we will start a conversation with Gemius in order to reconcile universes by virtue of owning a TV set, potentially introducing additional linking variables (currently all available linking data is used), and improving the demographic structure of OOH data. Proposed changes will be consulted with representatives of the media industry before their introduction. Nielsen will also take steps to develop, together with the industry, OOH data analysis standards in accordance with the auditor’s recommendation.”
Przemysław Broniszewski – Member of the Management Board of MOC TV: “The completed audit of the Gemius and Nielsen data fusion process is an important step in the aspect of building and developing research tools that create the television settlement currency agreed and accepted by the industry. We hope that the results of this audit will be satisfactory for the purchasing side, and will enable us to further plan the development of tools for integrating various data and television research. We also plan to continue discussions on the need to implement a coherent basis for combining various panels and researches, which applies to both the subject of establishment surveys and the use of calibration solutions (e.g. data from end devices and services).”
