Nielsen to measure YouTube on CTV in US

Ad measurement firm Nielsen has announced that it will begin to include CTV viewing of YouTube in its ratings. 

The company has said that YouTube’s streaming TV inventory will be measured in its Digital Ad Ratings and Total Ad Ratings. It said that this will help media buyers and sellers to better understand and verify audiences on both the YouTube and YouTube TV apps on CTV.

This marks the first time that Nielsen will measure CTV viewing of YouTube and its cord-cutting OTT service YouTube TV, with the firm already measuring viewing on computer and mobile.

Nielsen said that the first phase of this measurement will be enabled in H1 2021 with YouTube TV and extending to the YouTube app on CTVs in the US after that. It said that this implementation will be in place ahead of the 2021-22 Upfronts.

YouTube is the clear favourite of US viewers as a video streamer. As of September 2019, according to Statista, the platform attracts 164 million users per month. This was, at the time, more than Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Vimeo combined.

With this coverage expansion, Nielsen said that it is “bringing unprecedented transparency” to YouTube and provide buyers with increased confidence in their investments.

Debbie Weinstein, Vice President, Global Solutions, YouTube, said: “Over 100 million people in the U.S. watch YouTube and YouTube TV on their connected TVs every month. Advertisers are asking for third-party measurement partners like Nielsen to provide a complete view of YouTube and YouTube TV audiences, so they can understand the scale of the audience they’re able to reach through CTV campaigns.”

Scott Brown, GM of Audience Measurement at Nielsen, said: “As streaming through connected devices surges, measuring the audience is critical as the industry demands a currency grade solution that provides marketers and publishers holistic, cross-platform metrics about advanced TV campaigns.

“Because connected TV is addressable by nature, expanding our relationship with Google to measure YouTube audiences on connected devices is an important step to deliver cross media ad measurement and comparability between CTV and addressable on linear TV.”