NEW YORK—Nielsen has announced a multi-year data license renewal agreement with Comcast Corporation that will give it access to Comcast’s return path data (RPD).
The agreement expands Nielsen's big data footprint to nearly 45 million homes.
"We are delighted to extend our strategic partnership with Comcast allowing us to continue to embrace the power of big data for our services both locally across nearly 100 markets and nationally with addressable measurement," said Karthik Rao, CEO of Audience Measurement, Nielsen. "This agreement dually reinforces the importance big data plays in our work and Nielsen's deep commitment to delivering accurate measurement that helps our clients make informed decisions in an increasingly complex media landscape."
"Measurement is one of the foremost, complex and dynamic topics in TV advertising today and in order to continue to move the needle forward on progress and change, we need to work together to address, reconcile and resolve current industry challenges on this front," added Marcien Jenckes, managing director, Comcast Advertising. "Our announcement with Nielsen today is the latest proof point and step forward in that journey and we look forward to more continued momentum and innovation in the future."
It is expected that the expansion of Nielsen's measurement using Comcast RPD will be introduced into the market in 2024.
As part of the new agreement, Nielsen will expand its use of Comcast's return path data (RPD) in its national and local television and cross-media measurement services via its de-duplicated, audience measurement solution, Nielsen One. Nielsen will also broaden its use of Comcast RPD for local TV measurement across all of the 94 media markets the two companies share.
The two companies also reported that the agreement will produce a number of benefits for the industry in terms of data and analytics:
- Integrating Comcast's RPD alongside Nielsen's panel data will significantly enhance Nielsen's ability to comprehensively measure audiences across platforms and devices, including enabling linear addressable measurement for Nielsen's National TV service.
- The inclusion of RPD from Comcast expands Nielsen's current big data footprint to nearly 45 million households. This increased scale in audience coverage allows Nielsen customers to tap into sophisticated measurement and insights of fragmented and diverse audiences, enabling smarter decisions around campaign spend and optimization.
- This agreement will also further enable increased measurement fidelity in the largest local markets while allowing programmers and agencies to gain insight into advanced audiences across platforms.
- Additionally, programmers and agencies can take advantage of addressable ads reconciled with Nielsen's C3 commercial ratings measurement offering to optimize inventory and ad spend
- From a macro perspective, this agreement reinforces both companies' continued commitment to driving measurement innovation and delivering the most accurate measurement data in today's evolving media and marketing landscape.
