Nielsen: We’re rolling out Digital Content Ratings

Take note, media buyers and planners eagerly anticipating the rollout of Nielsen’s Total Audience Measurement, which will combine TV and digital ratings into one neat package allowing comparisons across platforms.

Nielsen is rolling out Digital Content Ratings starting Friday, making available daily measurement of audience across digital sites, including text and video ratings. DCR will be a key component of the TCM ratings.

The company says the DCRs will be comparable to television.

The ratings will only be available in full syndication for clients, meaning this information isn’t explicitly being released to the media, though no doubt some of it will come out.

Client partners on new ratings

The new ratings are based on Nielsen’s census data platform, SDKs and Cloud API. They will measure all connected devices, including everything from game consoles to Rokus, as well as mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets.

Among the initial client participants are Mashable, Vice, Buzzfeed and Discovery.

It may be tempting to simply add these new ratings to existing linear television ratings to come up with a show’s full reach, but Nielsen cautions those won’t be accurate and may include some duplicate viewing.

Media people have been clamoring for reliable cross-platform ratings for years. The release of TCM has been pushed back several times, but Nielsen claims the program will be fully rolled out by next spring, which may be a bit too late to be used as currency for the 2017 upfront.

Tags: dcr, digital content ratings, nielsen, ratings, total content management