SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents actors, hosts, broadcasters and more, said it had renewed its deal with measurement giant Nielsen that will have the company stand as its primary arbiter of viewership for streaming content.
The labor union uses Nielsen measurement and insights to gauge U.S. viewership data for original streaming content. SAG-AFTRA said it will continue to use Nielsen to “inform the union’s forecasting and enforcement efforts around the new terms of the streaming bonus provisions of the 2023 TV/Theatrical Contract.”
“With the pace of change in our industry and the additional metrics we are now tracking, having the Nielsen streaming data to underpin the first-party data we receive has been both essential and highly effective, and as a result we will be continuing to rely on that data moving forward,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator, in a prepared statement.
The union said it uses Nielsen’s data to complement first-party information from various streamers, and believes the Nielsen information serves” as a consistent and comparable lens through which the performance of streaming titles across various distribution platforms can be analyzed.”
Nielsen has in recent years faced new competition from a handful of startups, including VideoAmp and iSpot, that have gained traction with big U.S. media conglomerates seeking more comprehensive tabulation of how viewers watch video across both linear and streaming properties. Still, Nielsen has continued to strike new alliances, including with streamers such as Amazon’s Prime Video.
Nielsen has reigned for decades because many top advertisers have called for a neutral third party to count consumers attracted to a particular media property. But the TV companies have railed against Nielsen’s pace in finding a new solution, even as linear TV viewers migrate to broadband streaming.
variety.com
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