IAB Australia Rejects Nielsen DCR Video Metrics

Digital ad industry body IAB Australia has chosen not to endorse secondary crediting for video within Nielsen's Digital Content Ratings (DCR), following the company's admission that viewing time qualifiers for the product will be delayed until February 2019.

Nielsen is the official and exclusive supplier of digital audience measurement to IAB Australia, which stipulates that for someone to be included in video audience reach for a web site or app, they must have been qualified as having a minimum viewing time of two seconds in both on and off platform activity. This is in line with the recommendations published by the Media Ratings Council (MRC) Digital Audience-Based Measurement Standards last December. IAB Australia says it remains supportive of DCR including secondary crediting for text and static image and that its decision only relates to how DCR is treating video.

In June, Nielsen faced complaints and threats to withhold payment from a number of publishers, unhappy about the data in its Digital Ratings Monthly (DRM) solution, and discrepancies between DRM and the newer DCR service. DCR combines digital device panels with census-based measurement, to deliver a daily view of how people engage with text, video and audio content across all digital devices. According to IAB Australia, some publishers had started to track their Facebook video activity on the understanding that qualifiers would be introduced in 2018, while other publishers will be delaying this tracking until the qualifiers are in place. IAB Australia said it will support the inclusion of the off-platform audience data once the viewing qualifiers have been introduced, but until that time, it will only endorse video audience data which excludes Facebook secondary crediting for off-platform video content.

According to interim CEO Gai Le Roy (pictured), although many analytics tools and other audience measurement tools count people from video start, IAB Australia believes this is not robust enough to calculate the audience-reach data that is needed for media buyers and advertisers to make accurate decisions. She adds: 'The IAB continues to support DCR independent third party measurement for digital audience measurement as it offers world's best practice for online audience measurement and is more inclusive of both long and short form video formats. However there will be times when we will challenge and choose not to endorse particular metrics within the system. This is one of those times'.

Web site: www.iabaustralia.com.au .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.