• by Wayne Friedman , May 17, 2018

After years of pushing to account for time-shifted local TV viewing by TV station executives, Nielsen says it will offer a separate data stream that will include one day of delayed viewing.

Nielsen says it will offer a live program-plus-one-day of time-shifted viewing metric for local TV stations -- in addition to the standard live-only program ratings.

The company says the metric will first be available via monthly reports, starting in July. In addition, there will be daily reports, starting in September, which Nielsen says will be “precisely reporting on each live [program] plus 27 hours of [time-shifted] viewing.”

Nielsen says the live-only program ratings would still be tabulated and available, but would not appear as a published stream in third-party processors’ systems. The TV measurement company says it is working with media-buying systems that work with TV stations, including Mediaocean, Strata and WideOrbit, to ensure smooth delivery of the new TV data stream.

All this follows a joint effort earlier this year by The 4As, the advertising agency association, and the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), the TV station advertising group, proposing a change to Nielsen’s published data streams to better account for local TV consumption -- which meant capturing delayed viewing.

That proposal suggested replacing Nielsen’s live program-only ratings with live program-plus-one day of time-shifted viewing.

At that time, Steve Lanzano, president of the TVB, said: “Live+1 also very closely aligns with and is the best surrogate of national C7 ratings, which has become the predominant national transaction currency.”

For more than a decade, local TV stations have pushed for Nielsen to include some time-shifted viewing to be incorporated into its suite of metric products.

In 2007, national TV networks and media agency groups moved to include time-shifted viewing based on TV commercial viewing in Nielsen’s average commercial minute ratings plus three days of time-shifted viewing (C3). In recent years, a C7 metric was added for TV networks and advertisers.