Follow along as we break down what advanced audiences are, why they matter and how they’re changing the ad world.

What’s an advanced audience?

In traditional media spaces, the standard demographic filters used to understand and reach audiences has been age and gender. Advanced audiences can go well beyond these basic demos. 

Advanced audiences, sometimes called custom audiences, are consumer segments marketers use to group people together based on where they live, what they buy or intend to buy, how much money they make, the media they consume, the communities they’re part of, and so on. Marketers bring these audience lists to advertising platforms so they can reach them there with specific messaging. 

The idea is that by narrowing down the group of recipients, you’re able to get hyper-targeted with your campaigns so they’re more likely to resonate. You increase effectiveness and reduce wasted spend by only reaching the folks who will likely care about what you’re selling, and you’re also able to see exactly how well campaigns performed within these groups. What you sacrifice in mass reach, you make up for in increased relevance. 

Advanced audience segments are built from first, second or third-party data, or some combination of the three, which we’ll get into in the next section. 

Once you have your advanced audience lists, you can build lookalike audiences that expand your initial group based on their commonalities. For example, if everybody in your initial advanced audience list cares about pets and uses TikTok, then a lookalike audience will include people who also care about pets and use TikTok. 

What do you need to create advanced audiences? 

Advanced audiences sound great, right? Now let’s look at how you actually build them. 

The first and most important step is securing your data.

First-party data

First-party data is audience information collected directly from the consumer, by the brand. 

Brands with the ability to collect their own audience data have an upper hand. Since it’s controlled by the brand and gathered straight from the source (in this case the audience), brands are able to easily expand what information gets captured with every channel interaction, new purchase, survey response or chatbot conversation. 
The value of first-party data is exactly why so many brands create incentives for consumers to engage within their ecosystems. Sign up and get 20% off your next purchase. Create an account and see your personalized list of recommendations. Login to track your order delivery.

Second-party data

Of course, not every brand has access to first-party data. It may be hard to convince the general population to login into a soda provider’s website to order their next 12-pack. These brands may rely on second-party data, which is another’s company’s first-party data that’s acquired through a partnership. 

Third-party data 

While first and second-party data is collected directly from the audience, third-party data can come from several sources and is available for anyone to purchase. This is also the data pool most directly affected by the loss of cookies, forcing data providers to find reliable alternatives to digitally identify audiences. 

By combining proprietary Nielsen audience data (we have tens of thousands of advanced audience segments) with first-party data from our partners, Nielsen helps brands get a more comprehensive view of their ideal consumer and sharpen their campaign targeting capabilities. 

Insights are only as good as the data they’re built on. Since third-party data is gathered externally, brands should prioritize working with trusted partners who can prove the accuracy of what they deliver. 

Once you have your audience data, you can create advanced audience lists and upload them across platforms to begin targeting your campaign creative. While this is a relatively straightforward and standardized process across most digital platforms, other channels are playing catch up. 

Where can you use advanced audiences?  

Advanced audience targeting first became a thing online thanks to the level of detail our digital footprints leave behind. Through digital identifiers, like usernames and browsing histories, marketers are able to tap into rich levels of consumer insight: who they are, what they want to consume and what they do after seeing an ad.  All of these inputs help marketers create resonant campaigns for groups as niche as their data allows—informing everything from the creative to the timing and placement. It also helped digital platforms and publishers prove their ability to reach the exact audiences their clients cared about. 

Traditional media like broadcast and cable may have unbeatable reach, but digital media is all about precision. At least that’s been the historical trade-off. But as the world has gone digital, there are new and heightened expectations for all channels to support the same level of audience addressability and performance accountability. 

In the past decade, traditional media have carved out new outlets to dynamically address advertising to advanced audiences, like connected TV (CTV), free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels and data-driven linear¹. Still, there are foundational differences in how readily these channels can support planning and measuring against niche audience segments.  

The next phase of advanced audiences will be ensuring standardized utility no matter the medium. This will require system overhauls to prioritize interoperability²— with the end goal being that the audience defined is the audience reached.  

How do advanced audiences work at Nielsen? 

Supporting this interoperability vision is at the heart of Nielsen’s strategy. We are acutely aware of the headaches a fragmented media environment creates for all sides of the media industry. It’s harder to reach specific audiences and manage how often they see your campaigns. Comprehensive planning and activation feels impossible as everything gets brought down to channel specifics. 

But what if traditional media consistently operated with the same level of insight and personalization as digital? What if you could bring your own audiences to every platform and use them for planning, measurement and optimization?

Within the Nielsen ecosystem, you’re able to bring your own IDs or choose from audience segments developed from our cross-channel big data sets calibrated by gold-standard people panels. All audience data then goes through the Nielsen Identity System to ensure a deduplicated view of the audience across all screens and channels. What’s more, you’re able to reuse these audiences across all integrated Nielsen products and ensure audiences definitions are consistent across the entire user journey. Using the same defined audience, you’re able to build your media plans based on tailored insights and forecasting, purchase media, and get a deduplicated view of how well you reached your audience across channels.

Depending on where you are in the world, all of this is available today with Nielsen. But we are just getting started. Advanced audiences are now at the center of this brave, new advertising world, and Nielsen is here to help you thrive in it. 

Notes

¹Data-driven linear is a process marketers use to allocate linear TV programming spend against demos beyond age and gender.
²Interoperability, in this instance, is when different technological systems interact with each other seamlessly. For example, being able to send and receive emails across all providers is interoperability at work.

The post Need to Know: What is advanced audience targeting and why is it important? appeared first on Nielsen.

While prices may be higher, the extra spending could pay off even for non-political advertisers. News programming typically sees a boost in viewership during election years. U.S. News viewership in 2020 was extraordinarily high due to COVID coverage, social unrest and a tight election. But even during the mid-year election in 2022, both broadcast and cable news programming saw audiences spending more time with news than the non-election years 2021 and 2023. 

Time spent with news differs across demos 

Understanding consumption habits can help you reach the right audiences on the right media. With 24-hour news programming, it’s not surprising that Americans spent more time with cable news than broadcast news in 2023. When we look at total time spent by gender, both genders follow the trends for the population as a whole. However, while men watched slightly (5.7%) more minutes of cable news than women, women watched 47.7% more minutes of broadcast news than men.

Black viewers spend the most time with TV in general, including news programming, well ahead of Hispanic and Asian viewers. Both Black and Asian viewers follow the general population pattern, spending more time with cable news programming than broadcast. In this, Hispanic viewers are the outlier, spending slightly more annual minutes with broadcast news than cable. Advertisers looking to influence women and Hispanic voters shouldn’t overlook the power of traditional broadcast news.

News programming access is expanding 

How viewers are accessing both broadcast and cable is changing. Americans are increasingly using over-the-air (OTA) and over-the-top (OTT) devices, including virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs), such as YouTubeTV, Sling TV and Hulu+ Live TV, to access TV programming. Household vMVPD subscriptions have increased year-over-year for the last three years, growing from 12.1% of all U.S. TV households in December 2021 to 16.5% in December 2023¹. And news viewing on vMVPDs follows a similar trend. 

The increase in vMVPD viewership hints at a larger shift of audiences toward digital and connected TV (CTV). And these media will likely capture big ad dollars as part of this election cycle–eMarketer forecasts digital political ad spend will hit $3.46 billion this year. 

The right media mix is critical to reach voters

To better understand digital trends, we used our Scarborough consumer insights to study how people affiliated with different political parties use the internet or apps to consume video content. Reaching independent voters will be critical for political campaigns eager to earn votes from undecided audiences. And understanding how they report connecting to digital video content can make sure marketers reach them in the right places. 

Those who consider themselves to be independent but say they align closer to the Democrat party are 15% more likely than the average U.S. adult to watch technology news video content on the internet or apps². Beyond news content, these respondents were 17% more likely to watch cartoon videos. Meanwhile, those who consider themselves independent but say they align closer to the Republican party are 15% more likely than the average U.S. adult to watch business news on the internet or apps. Outside of news, they’re 13% more likely to watch sports videos. 

But with Google’s depreciation of cookies in the second half of this year, all advertisers will likely have a harder time reaching the right audiences on digital media. This could cause marketers to shift their ad dollars, including political ad dollars, toward publishers with their own robust first-party data. The programmatic power of CTV is enticing to marketers, but reach is far more complicated in CTV than linear TV because of the commingled nature of the platform and campaign IDs in measurement data. Through that lens, it’s not surprising that only 31% of global marketers say they’re very confident in measuring the ROI of their CTV investments³.

For political marketers, adding radio to the marketing mix could offer valuable incremental reach opportunities for campaigns. Nielsen recently conducted a study of 2022 political campaigns using Nielsen Media Impact. In the competitive 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr. Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman, we found that, by allocating one-fifth of the ad budget to AM/FM radio, the Fetterman campaign was able to deliver a 12% bump in audience reach without increasing spend. With radio’s hyper local listenership, tailoring messaging—and media placements—to the city level can help advertisers reach key demographics.

2024 will present challenges for political and non-political advertisers alike to reach audiences across media. Better understanding how audiences are consuming news content can help them navigate this fragmented landscape successfully. And being creative in your cross-media mix can help drive incremental reach with key audiences.

Source

¹Numbers based on Nielsen’s panel penetration. Nielsen began producing households with a vMVPD Universe Estimate (UE) in July 2023. That UE has increased month-over-month, growing from 15.9% in July 2023 to 16.4% in February 2024.
²Includes types of video content streamed from the Internet on a computer (laptop or desktop), mobile device (smartphone or tablet) or Internet connected device (such as Roku, smart TV, game console, etc.) in the past 30 days.
³Nielsen Annual Marketing Report, 2024.

The post Understanding how audiences connect with news media ahead of the 2024 U.S. elections appeared first on Nielsen.

At Nielsen, we’re committed to innovating on our industry-accepted TV audience measurement to ensure the media industry can trade with confidence. To that end, we’ve invested a decade of research in integrating big data sets into our methodologies in innovative ways that also ensure continuity with our currency measurement. For the ‘24-’25 TV season in the U.S., we have enhanced our Big Data + Panel stream to include Comcast data (in addition to DISH, DirecTV, Roku and Vizio).

Our big data set includes 45 million big data households and 75 million devices, which rivals that of any other measurement provider. By combining (and validating) our big data with our gold-standard panel of approximately 42,000 U.S. homes (including 101,000+ real people), we’re able to leverage the scale and coverage of big data with the granularity and representation of our industry-leading panel for deeper audience insights.

To help the industry navigate the transition, both our Big Data + Panel and Panel measurement data will be available for the coming TV season. And with two views of the U.S. audience for every Nielsen-measured telecast in 2023, we inevitably see some differences. Whenever a measurement sample changes, audience estimates will also change. They may go up or down depending on the individual network, program or telecast, but larger sample sizes facilitate more comprehensive measurement. To help the industry better plan and negotiate around this year’s TV season with Big Data + Panel, we’ve compared average overall TV usage, as well as for programs and genres, for the past year.

How does total TV usage change?

With Big Data + Panel, the total U.S. households using television in 2023 increased slightly across most age groups compared with TV panel data alone. When we break TV usage out by race and ethnicity, we see similar trends. The numbers of Hispanic and Black households using television also generally increased across each age group with Big Data + Panel. Differences in the data sets vary by age groups across all demographics, but each of the three segments showed the most significant increase among older age groups (people 65+).

In addition to understanding how audiences of different age, race and ethnicity shift with Big Data + Panel, understanding changes throughout the day is also important for media planning. When we look at viewing throughout the day, TV usage generally increased slightly during each part of the day. Overnight hours had the smallest increase.

With 45 million big data households and 75 million devices, our Big Data + Panel approach expands coverage and scale. Greater coverage and scale allow for the measurement of even more people and programs. For both buyers and sellers, this opens up more opportunities to understand and engage with viewers. Audiences today are eager to see themselves in both the content and ads on TV, especially Black and Hispanic audiences. Understanding reach across segments and dayparts can help you connect audiences with the right content (and ads) at the right time.  

While the big data brings scale, combining it with our panel data plays a key role in unlocking these audience insights. Our gold-standard panel allows media buyers and sellers to go beyond households to understand the people consuming media. They’re able to ask deeper questions, such as: Who lives in the home? How old are they? What race and ethnicity do they identify as? Who is watching the television at a given point in time? As a result, our Big Data + Panel data stream is able to provide demographic, geographic, over-the-air and broadband only household information, as well as out-of-home (OOH) viewing. 

How do program ratings change?

While overall TV usage overall generally increased across age groups, ratings across individual networks, programs and telecasts vary. Averaging the more than 111,000 programs across broadcast, cable and syndication in 2023, most program ratings saw little to no change or positive change. In fact, among people 2+, 87.5% of programs saw little to no change or positive change in ratings. Similar to overall TV usage, program ratings do differ across age groups, with older demographics seeing more change–both positive and negative.

To understand how the methodology changes impacted different programs, we also looked at programming genres. Across broadcast, cable and syndication, the average monthly percent change between Big Data + Panel and TV panel for people 2+ increased for almost all genres.

With the addition of bigger datasets, our measurement sample does change, and some of the program (and genre) rating changes may reflect these differences in data. However, program ratings also genuinely fluctuate–just as people’s behaviors do. A program’s audience will fluctuate from telecast to telecast, and these averages will reflect some of that natural variability. 

One of the key benefits of adding big data to our panel measurement is enhanced granularity and measurement stability. With deeper data sets comes increasing viewing estimate stability, reducing sampling errors, and reducing the number of programs with no reported viewing (zero ratings). Across broadcast, cable and syndication, the percentage of zero audience programs decreases with additional viewers.

The benefits of Big Data + Panel

Big data does not eliminate variability in the data and we don’t expect it to, as there is real variability in the population. However, our Big Data + Panel approach innovates on our already gold-standard panel data to deliver sensitive and stable ratings overall, resulting in the near elimination of zero ratings and reductions in telecast variability. For publishers, the increased granularity and stability of the Big Data + Panel data stream means more of the national TV inventory is monetizable: increasing from 88% to 99.9%.

For advertisers and agencies, that means more opportunities to connect with audiences. By marrying the scale of big data with person-level information from our panel, we’re able to provide more advanced targeting to unlock the ability to capitalize on linear addressable capabilities, as well as advanced audience segments.

Ultimately, Nielsen believes that a single currency (supported by secondary metrics) results in a more efficient marketplace. But during this period of transition, having both Big Data + Panel and Panel measurement available will help the industry navigate this change and trade with confidence.

Sources

¹Nielsen National TV Panel, October 2023.
²CTV refers to any television that is connected to the internet. The most common use of the internet connection is to stream video content.

The post How audience measurement innovation benefits the media industry appeared first on Nielsen.

While recent hits like Queen Charlotte, The Blackening and They Cloned Tyrone portrayed diverse friend groups, story lines and genres, many Black audiences view the portrayals of their identities as one-dimensional¹. At least part of that sentiment stems from the perception that on-screen urban portrayals remain far more prevalent than rural and suburban portrayals.

But we know that authenticity involves more than character setting. Dimensions of diversity are numerous, spanning well beyond skin tone and narrative location. Seventy percent of Black audiences who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, for example, believe they are misrepresented in media, while 81% of Afro Latinos feel misrepresented¹.

Dimensions of diversity will become even more important considerations in Black representation over time, as the U.S. Census forecasts that one-third of the Black population’s growth through 2060 will come from immigration, adding to the complexity of an already diverse audience. According to our recent Black Diaspora Study, powered by Toluna, an average of 47% of respondents from Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa say they wish they saw more of their identity group on TV.

From a content consumption perspective, the perceptions of representation among Black audiences are critical considerations for the media industry. That’s because they have considerably more media engagement than the general population. They also spend nearly 32% more time with TV each week than the general population². The implications of this level of content engagement spans beyond creators and platforms. They are just as relevant for brands, especially as audiences continue increasing their time with ad-supported video content. 

The right message is critical, and a persona-rich audience highlights the importance of understanding individuals within a diverse community. Our recent Black Diaspora Study found that brands have some ground to gain on this front. That’s because 35.7% of Black Americans believe that brands always represent Black people the same way in advertising, compared with 27.9% among the U.S. general population. The disconnect between how Black audiences feel they’re represented in a campaign could affect the ROI that brands are counting on to fuel growth.

We know that people want to see themselves in advertising, but audiences also want what they see to match what they see through their own eyes. Relevance is critical to engagement across all media types, and global audiences have different perspectives about which media types have the most relevant advertising. Black audiences in Nigeria, the U.K. and South Africa want more relevant ads in traditional and streaming TV content, while Black audiences in Brazil express the most desire for more relevant ads in streaming music.  

Knowing that consumers often seek out brands that champion causes and messages they believe in, relevance, at least to many audiences, has come to represent more than just a brand promise. Relatable value propositions will always be critical, but Black consumers have come to expect that brands support the causes they care about. And when brands don’t measure up, the Black community—especially in Nigeria, the U.K. and Brazil—isn’t afraid to walk away from them.

At its core, media is a means of connecting. The stronger the connection, the greater the engagement. Through that lens, no audience places a higher level of importance on media than Black audiences do. To maintain the engagement of this media-hungry audience, inclusion should be at the forefront of each production’s and brand campaign’s growth and development strategy in this next era of media. In an increasingly fragmenting media world, discerning audiences will be quick to move on when they land on something they don’t like.

For additional insights, download our latest Black Diverse Intelligence Series report: The global Black audience: Shaping the future of media.

Notes

¹Nielsen’s 2023 Black Diaspora Study powered by Toluna

²Nielsen National TV Panel; Q2 2023

The post Black audiences are looking for relevant representation in advertising and content appeared first on Nielsen.

Case study

Reaching voters with radio 

In a crowded market for political ads, radio offers an advantage

Contact us

Case study

Reaching voters with radio 

In a crowded market for political ads, radio offers an advantage

Contact us

Introduction

Understand the reach of radio with U.S. voters

During election years in the U.S., political campaigns invest significant dollars in advertising across media platforms. To better understand how radio can help campaigns reach more voters, three leading audio-first media companies, iHeart, Audacy and Cumulus, commissioned a study on optimizing multimedia campaigns. As part of the study, we looked at the competitive 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr. Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman.

Objective

Identify incremental reach opportunities

Despite heavy spending on TV in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the Fetterman campaign relied on 13 weeks of radio to supplement the video message ahead of winning the race. By studying this campaign, we sought to understand how radio can help candidates reach more voters in a fragmented media landscape.

Challenge

Reach more of the voting public in the face of media fragmentation

John Fetterman’s 2022 senate campaign wanted to reach more voters without increasing its media budget. While linear TV ads have long been a cornerstone for political campaigns—and continue to be important—audience reach has splintered as more channels have emerged, and the Fetterman campaign needed to know where voters were.

Solution

Use Nielsen Media Impact data to reveal the most effective media mix

By using Nielsen Media Impact, we were able to predict how the campaign team could best reach their target voters based on different budget allocation scenarios. The Fetterman campaign was able to fill a 12% gap of voters they could no longer reach through linear TV by shifting 20% of their political spend to AM/FM radio.

Key findings

Key findings

12%

Radio increased reach without impacting budget

By allocating one-fifth of the ad budget to AM/FM radio, the campaign was able to deliver a 12% bump in audience reach without increasing spend.

29%

Radio delivers the most incremental reach for light TV viewers

Radio added 29% more incremental reach among TV viewers who watch less than two hours a day–more than connected TV (CTV)¹ or social.

23%

Radio reaches more unaffiliated viewers

Adding radio to the campaign media mix resulted in a 23% lift in reaching “swing voters.”²

Notes:
¹CTV refers to any television that is connected to the internet. The most common use of the internet connection is to stream video content.
²Swing voters refers to voters who have not voted consistently with one party in the past or they were still making up their minds ahead of the November election.

Results

Diversifying political ad spend with radio paid off

Based on Nielsen’s Local Media Impact data, the 2022 John Fetterman campaign saw a 10% lift from radio above the local TV campaign, which amounted to 676,000 additional voters secured at no additional cost. Fetterman won the election by less than 300,000 votes—underscoring the importance of fully optimizing your media mix.

Conclusion

Radio is an effective channel for scaling reach

To reach your audience, you first have to know where they are. By merging voting behavior and viewership data, Nielsen was able to determine that radio is an impactful and cost-effective addition to the marketing mixes of political campaigns. Explore more insights into how radio performs for political campaigns.

Want to talk with our team of experts?

Contact us

Want to talk with our team of experts?

Contact us

Want to talk with our team of experts?

Contact us

The post Reaching voters with radio  appeared first on Nielsen.

Media has become omnipresent among many consumers, but engagement is highest among Black audiences, who spend about 12 hours more time with media each week than the general population². In addition to its ability to connect, today’s media landscape offers immense choice—a quality that facilitates stories and experiences that can more completely emulate the complexity of the growing Black community. 

As with all audiences, Black Americans spend the biggest portion of their media time with TV, followed by their smartphones and radio. Unlike other audiences, however, TV plays a much bigger role in their daily lives than the general population. Not only does TV account for a larger share of their media diets, Black adults spend 31.8% more time with TV each week than the general population. 

In total, Black viewers spend almost 55% of their media time with TV: live programming, time-shifted viewing and content they access through TV-connected (CTV)³ devices. Among audiences 65 and older, TV accounts for almost 69% of all media use. Through the lens of total TV usage, Black audiences are the most proportionate with the time they spend with all TV content, embracing everything TV offers them.

Much of the allure of TV content among Black audiences stems from its growing variety and inclusiveness. Across linear channels and streaming services, U.S. audiences now have access to more than 1.1 million unique titles⁴ to choose from, an increase of more than 75% in just three years. In terms of appeal, this massive library is very inclusive of the Black community. In fact, in second-quarter 2023, Black talent had a higher share of screen⁵ than other historically excluded populations.

Yet while Black talent has never been more visible on TV—and well above parity⁶—audience demand suggests there’s room for even more. In fact, Nielsen’s 2023 Black Diaspora Study powered by Toluna found that the desire for more inclusion on TV was higher among Black audiences than any other identity group.

And while U.S. Black audiences are 1.4x more likely than the general population⁷ to say there’s not enough representation, the demand is even higher in other countries. This suggests that while the presence of Black talent may be widespread at a macro level, global survey respondents don’t believe it captures the complex intersectionality across Black communities around the world.

Perhaps more important than representation, however, is the need for diverse, authentic and accurate portrayals in content—something Black audiences feel needs to be improved. While this sentiment is high globally, it’s particularly outsized in Nigeria.

In looking at immigration trends, the sentiment from Nigeria and South Africa is particularly noteworthy. While the Caribbean remains the largest contributor of the rising foreign-born Black population in the U.S., Africa now accounts for the fastest growth, contributing more than 2 million in 2019 alone⁸. Diverse in its own right, that influx comprises individuals from 51 countries⁹, introducing a range of ethnic, linguistic and educational backgrounds.

With such a large infusion of people and cultures expected in the coming decades, complemented by the importance of media within the Black community, the globalization of Black America sets the stage for brands and programmers looking to engage with this diverse audience in a rapidly expanding media landscape.

For additional insights, download our latest Black Diverse Intelligence Series report: The global Black audience: Shaping the future of media.

Notes

¹Pew Research Center; January 2022

²Nielsen National TV Panel; Q2 2023

³CTV refers to any television that is connected to the internet. The most common use case is to stream video content.

⁴Gracenote Global Video Data; October 2023

⁵Share of screen, from Gracenote Inclusion Analytics, is the percentage of an identity group that appears on screen.

⁶Above parity means that the percentage of representation is higher than the percentage of the U.S. Black population, which is 13.6%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

⁷Nielsen 2023 Black Diaspora Study powered by Toluna

⁸U.S. Census Bureau 2010, 2019 American Community Surveys (ACS), and Campbell J. Gibson and Kay Jung, “Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 1850-2000“

⁹The Migration Policy Institute; May 2022

The post Creating connections with Black Americans across media appeared first on Nielsen.

2024 Diverse Intelligence Series

The global
Black
audience

Shaping the future of media

Black America continues to diversify, and media will need to evolve to stay relevant for this media-hungry audience with a global influence on trends and culture.

Download the report

2024 Diverse Intelligence Series

The global
Black
audience

Shaping the future of media

Black America continues to diversify, and media will need to evolve to stay relevant for this media-hungry audience with a global influence on trends and culture.

Download the report

The globalization of Black America

Black America is complex, but immigration trends will add to that complexity. As the diversity of this population grows, the media industry will need to focus on authenticity and accurate representations to maintain this audience’s high engagement with content.

The U.S. Black population is projected to grow from 15% today to 18% by 2060

The African-born U.S. population has grown 3x in the past 20 years

Two out of three Black Americans want to see more representation of their identity group on screen

Data sources: U.S. Census; Pew Research Center; Nielsen Black Diaspora Study, powered by Toluna

Download the report

The role of media in culture

This report highlights the significant amount of engagement Black America has with media, as well as this diversifying audience’s perspective on representation in content and advertising. Key sections include:

Black audiences are power TV users

Black adults spend 31.8% more time with TV each week than the general U.S. population.

The state of representation on TV

Representation is a key driver of media engagement. Black talent on TV has never been more visible, but the numbers—and audience demand—suggest there’s room for even more. Our most recent study found that 70% of Black LGBTQ+ respondents and 66% of Black men often feel misrepresented in media.

TV content is a global affair

While representation and diversity dimensions vary across providers, audiences stay engaged when they find what they’re looking for. Engagement with Blood Sisters and Far From Home, for example, reflect Netflix’s investment in Nollywood.

Brand strategies for relevance and inclusion

Meaningful engagement requires more than simply understanding where content is being consumed. Dimensions of diversity matter. Our most recent study found that almost 36% of Black audiences believe brands portray all Black people the same in advertising.

Download the report

The post The global Black audience: Shaping the future of media appeared first on Nielsen.

At a high level, TV households can access TV content in one of three ways:

• Cable/Direct broadcast satellite
• Broadband internet
• Over-the-air (OTA) antenna

These access points are not mutually exclusive. A home can have TV sets that access content in different ways. Many homes, for example, access content through cable boxes and complement that content with streaming video. The same is true of homes that access free OTA programming; 60% of OTA households also subscribe to a streaming video service.

To help clients better understand the fragmentation of TV content access types, Nielsen has prepared a set of informational universe estimates that break down the U.S. TV universe by access type.

Given the variety of options, the topic of content access has become increasingly important, particularly with respect to measuring connected TV (CTV)¹ usage. CTV usage, which allows audiences to access anything the internet has to offer, had grown to account for more than 38% of total TV usage among adults as of second-quarter 2023. The reason? Choice. According to Gracenote Global Video Data, 84% of the studio-produced video titles available to U.S. audiences are available on streaming platforms.

The recent ramp-up in CTV adoption has significantly amplified streaming usage over the last year: Streaming has accounted for more than one-third of total TV usage in the U.S. since February 2023, and has accounted for more than 36% since May². During the week of Nov. 6, 2023, for example, TV audiences watched more than 15.6 billion hours of the top 10 most-streamed original programs, movies and acquired programs available to them³.

While widespread CTV adoption signals a new era in how audiences access content, it has created a misconception that viewers no longer watch linear programming. Importantly, the reality is quite the opposite. In fact, regardless of how a home accesses TV content, more than 90% watch some amount of linear programming.

The variety of content available outside of traditional cable packages is undeniable, and audiences are actively using TV connected devices and smart TVs to access it. Yet while the percentage of homes that access TV content through a broadband internet connection had risen to just under 40%⁴ in September of 2023, CTV access does not mean audiences are only watching on-demand content. In fact, 82% of BBO only households were watching linear programming in October, which is up 3 percentage points from earlier in the year. 

Given that none of the ways in which audiences access TV are mutually exclusive, consensus about TV home classification has become complicated, especially with regard to homes that now access content with an internet connection. Much of that complication, however, is related to the range of acronyms and terms that have been coined to describe the technology associated with content access. These acronyms and terms of art overcomplicate the premise of audience measurement, especially with regard to CTV usage.

Through the lens of total TV usage, regardless of access point, the keys to media planning only involve answering two questions:

• Who’s watching
• What they’re watching

The shift in how connectivity is reshaping content access is undeniable, but advertisers and agencies can take comfort in knowing that the measurement data that they rely on—agnostic of content source—is accurate and representative of the comprehensive TV viewing audience. And given the complexities of today’s media landscape, Nielsen remains committed to working with the industry to better define its nuances.

To learn more audience and programming insights critical for the 2024 Upfronts/NewFronts planning season, read our full guide. 

Sources

¹CTV refers to any television that is connected to the internet. The most common use case is to stream video content
²The Gauge
³Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 lists
⁴This figure includes homes that access programming through a vMVPD. Later this year, homes that access programming from a vMVPD will be classified as cable homes.

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The scale of big data

At a high level, there are two primary sources of big data that are being used in linear television audience measurement:

• Return-path data (RPD) from cable and satellite set-top boxes (STBs)
• Automatic content recognition (ACR) data from smart TVs

With 70.6% of U.S. TV homes owning a smart TV, up from 62.3% two years ago, one of the biggest benefits of big data is scale. Scale is important in today’s fragmented viewing landscape. Our big data set currently includes 45 million households in the U.S. and 75 million devices from Comcast, Dish, DirecTV, Roku and Vizio, which rivals that of any other measurement provider.

However, these data sets are not uniform or homogenous, and they were not designed for use in audience measurement. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be used for this purpose. In fact, they can be very useful—but not by themselves. Making sense of big data requires a truth set that corrects for gaps, fluctuations and other intricacies in the big data set.

Ensuring measurement stability & representation

Pairing big data with a representative panel is critical to account for viewing across all devices and audiences in a stable way. Nielsen has a representative panel of 101,000 individuals from approximately 42,000 households that enables us to harness the power of big data while correcting for its shortcomings. 

And the industry agrees. The World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) ‘North Star’ principles for cross-media measurement call for a combination of quality panel and big data. In August 2022, both the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) and the Association of Advertisers (ANA) announced plans to build their own panels, as did Google for use in its online conversion measurement. Put differently, the industry is clamoring for approaches that both ensure representation and harness the power of big data. We believe Nielsen is uniquely positioned to provide these solutions.

We’ve invested a decade of research in integrating big data sets into our methodologies in innovative ways that also ensure continuity with our currency measurement. We incorporated big data into our U.S. local TV measurement in 2019 and into our national TV measurement in 2022. When used in concert with representative, persons-level panels, these big data sets can significantly advance the science of audience measurement.

1. Measurement is about people. Big data provides no information about the people who are doing the viewing. By pairing big data with panels, we’re able to understand who is viewing, as well as household makeup.
2. Measurement must be representative. Big data provides an incomplete picture of TV viewing. For example, RPD/STB and ACR data lack streaming coverage and over the air (OTA) viewing. As of November 2023, streaming accounted for 36.1% of television viewing in the U.S. Additionally, 18.1% of U.S. TV households have at least one TV set that accesses content using a digital antenna instead of STBs or an internet connection². Big data viewing sources also may not include all devices in the home. This is particularly an issue with ACR data where the number of devices returning data is about 1.1 per home. The average U.S. TV home has about 2.5 sets. Panels are critical to cover these gaps, and any measurement solution that solely relies on big data would miss these audiences.
3. Measurement is more than just data sources. ACR data, for example, simply identifies images on a screen. If the same piece of content is airing on multiple channels at the same time, the ACR data has no way of accurately attributing viewing to one channel versus the other. Similarly, RPD and STB data are often incapable of verifying if a TV is even on. Different RPD/STB providers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) also have different ways of collecting and processing data. This makes ingestion, harmonization, householding, and calibration both critical and extremely complex. 

Measurement shortcomings in RPD/STB and ACR data highlight why it is critical that these data are calibrated with people-based panels that accurately represent the diversity of a population. 

Navigating the evolution of measurement

By marrying the scale of big data with person-level information from innovative new panel meters, we’re able to provide enhanced granularity down to the individual commercial. This ensures advertisers can understand both who and how many people saw their exact ad. We’re also able to provide more advanced targeting to unlock the ability to capitalize on linear addressable capabilities, as well as advanced audience segments. 

There is no shortchanging the benefits Big Data+Panel will bring, but the shifts taking place in the media industry are far too significant to make wholesale methodology changes to data being used as currency on a moment’s notice. Stable transition in times of change will always be better than a very quick pivot. Times of transition also amplify the need for transparency, especially when measurement data underpins a global industry that ad research firm WARC estimates will top $1 trillion next year. 

Recognizing that the industry needs time to adapt to innovations in measurement, we made our national Big Data+Panel data stream available for transactions in parallel with our TV panel currency for the ‘23-’24 television season. For the ‘24-’25 season, we have enhanced our Big Data+Panel stream to include Comcast data (in addition to DISH, DirecTV, Roku and Vizio), and we’re committed to helping the industry navigate through this transition. Well aware that different organizations evolve and adapt at different rates, we will also provide our audited and accredited TV Panel data (average minute), as well as Big Data+Panel (at the average minute and individual commercial minute) during the coming season.  

The evolution of TV measurement will only happen with industry alignment. And while many agencies and advertisers are interested in moving toward measurement of exact commercials, the overall sentiment in the industry is that it’s not yet ready to retire C3/C7 ratings. We need to balance the equally valid needs for innovation and continuity. With three data sets available, buyers and sellers will be able to evolve systems to truly operationalize the planning, selling and buying of national linear TV at an exact commercial level. 

Sources:

¹ CTV refers to any television that is connected to the internet. The most common use of the internet connection is to stream video content
² Nielsen National TV Panel, November 2023

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In a lot of ways, it’s similar: It involves panels, big data and technology to capture what people are doing online and who they are. As with TV, publishers use measurement to gauge the popularity of their content and value their ad inventory, and advertisers use it to verify that their campaigns are running and reaching their intended audience at the right frequency¹.

While the basic principles and ultimate objectives of TV and digital measurement are similar, the tools, processes and ecosystem involved are very different.

Let’s dive in to understand the nuances of how to measure digital audiences and campaigns.

What do we mean by ‘digital measurement’ anyway?

At the most basic level, digital measurement means monitoring a user’s exposure to ads and content delivered over the internet. When we talk about digital measurement in the media industry, we generally focus on two dominant digital experiences: walled gardens and the open web.²

The key difference between the two is that walled gardens restrict access to their first party data—you know, like a garden locked behind a wall—and the open web does not. Social media sites are an example of walled gardens, whereas sites and apps like Weather.com, Words With Friends and CNN are part of the open web.

This is an important distinction for measurement purposes: Technically, a walled garden should have a pretty clear idea of who is accessing content and seeing ads on its platform. But if other companies want to measure their ad or content consumption within these walled gardens, generally, they have to build custom integrations that are compliant with privacy regulations.

While websites on the open web can have robust and authenticated first party data, it’s not always a given. In those cases, general websites often rely on proxy IDs and other adtech solutions to identify, target and measure users.

Current industry challenges

On the open web, the ongoing deprecation of third-party cookies and device IDs is making it more difficult to identify users and is forcing stakeholders to rethink their measurement approach. Apple’s decision in 2021 to change default app tracking permissions (from opt-out to opt-in) wiped out three-fourths of IDFAs (Apple’s mobile ad IDs) from consideration. And Google is scheduled to phase out third-party cookies in the second half of 2024, the final blow to an ID system that held up for the most part, but was always an imperfect solution. Cookies aren’t people, after all.

For walled gardens, the practice of sharing granular subscriber data with outside parties is largely a thing of the past, even for anonymized measurement purposes. To comply with major data global privacy regulations, walled gardens are now sharing activity data with advertisers and measurement companies in aggregate form, if they’re sharing it at all.

Those are serious challenges for measurement that have forced the industry to look elsewhere for consumer identifiers, signals and attributes. And it all starts with an impression.

What’s a digital ‘impression’ exactly?

Before we get into the details of what a modern digital measurement process looks like, let’s spell out what an impression is.

Impressions measure the number of times an ad or piece of content was delivered to a digital device. While impressions give you the total volume of exposure to your ad or content, it does not measure how many people actually saw it. (That’s reach.) So, for example, if five people saw your LinkedIn ad twice, that means your campaign impressions would be 10. 

Current digital media viewability guidelines to qualify an impression stipulate that an ad must be at least 50% in focus on the user’s screen—not hidden behind another window, for example, or playing in the background—for at least 1 second for display ads and 2 consecutive seconds for video ads. Impression time and viewability thresholds now provide a robust foundation for advertisers and publishers to set the terms of their media transactions.

Now that we understand what digital activity we’re measuring, let’s get into how we measure it. 

5 key steps in the digital measurement process

At Nielsen, we look at digital measurement as a five-step process:

Moving toward cross-media measurement

The measurement industry is under heavy pressure to adapt to massive changes already underway in the digital ecosystem. Advertisers need a clear view of campaign performance across digital devices, confidence in the results, and reliable tools to optimize their campaigns in flight.

But there’s even more pressure to get digital and TV impressions on a level playing field. This is an ongoing effort—what constitutes an impression on linear TV and on digital platforms aren’t the same yet—but thanks to the development of a common ID system and launch of Nielsen ONE, we’re already helping marketers deduplicate reach and frequency across select digital and linear platforms in key markets around the world.

At Nielsen, we’ve also recently launched ‘Always On’ digital measurement with proactive partners like YouTube to emulate the way that linear measurement is done and help marketers turn on digital measurement capabilities on a continuous basis, rather than campaign-by-campaign.

There’s more work to be done for full cross-media measurement to become reality in our industry, but with the right priorities, tools and process in place, we’re closer than we’ve ever been.

Nielsen’s Need to Know reviews the fundamentals of audience measurement and demystifies the media industry’s hottest topics.

Sources

¹For an overview of TV measurement, read Need to Know: How Are TV Audiences Measured?
²Connected-TV platforms and retail media networks share many characteristics with both walled gardens and the open web. Stay tuned for a future Need to Know article on those fast-growing media channels.
³The Nielsen software development kit (SDK) is one of multiple framework SDKs that Nielsen provides to measure both static and video content across platforms.
⁴Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings estimate that 37% of digital ad spend is currently wasted on impressions that are off-target, out-of-view or SIVT.

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