Roku announces measurement partnership with Nielsen

Roku has announced a partnership with Nielsen to measure content on its devices within Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR). 

Digital Content Ratings provides access to deduplicated reach and demographic insights for channels on Roku devices to identify which programmes most effectively reach key audiences. 

Nielsen described the partnership as a major milestone on the path to Nielsen ONE, Nielsen’s transformative, cross-media solution that promises to enable advertisers and publishers to transact using a single metric across linear and digital television.

The partnership will enable publishers to measure content across Roku’s 55.1 million active accounts. 

Louqman Parampath, VP of Product Management, Roku, said: “This strengthens the close collaboration between Roku and Nielsen. DCR’s syndicated, independent measurement provides market transparency and immediate value to our publishers around understanding audiences in their channels. This bolsters our commitment to delivering for our customers and underscores our focus to continue to be an innovator in the evolving TV streaming measurement landscape.”

Ameneh Atai, General Manager, Digital and Advanced TV Commercial Strategy, Nilesen, said: “TV streaming is the wave of the future for digital video consumption, and Roku is a major player in CTV penetration. With the addition of Roku, DCR will have the capability to measure the majority of CTV platforms devices as well as provide channel partners with an understanding of their overall reach across CTV devices. Armed with these insights, media buyers and sellers can make critical decisions around ad strategies and publishers can create informed programming and content distribution strategies.” 

The partnership should serve as a boost for Nielsen at a time when the measurement company is facing major scrutiny from broadcasters who have accused it of failing to capture consumer shifts away from traditional TV. Nielsen’s CEO David Kenny last month admitted “we haven’t been perfect,” while earlier this month the company relaunched its streaming measurement suite.