‘We are moving away from machine-based to people-based measurement’

David Kenny, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Nielsen, spoke to Rahul Kanwal, News Director, India Today, and Aaj Tak, India Today Group, on the changing trends of audience measurement, the fast-paced media business and what inclusion of AI tools means to the sector.

The conversation took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Excerpts:

Can you start by giving us a sense of the big trends you're most keenly watching out for in the world of audience measurement this year?

What we are doing is moving away from measuring devices, measuring TV screens, and measuring phone screens. It is all the same. So, we are moving away from machine-based measurement to people-based measurement, which means we are really respecting and measuring time. Where does a consumer spend her whole day and how much of it is on which screen, and what exactly is she watching at each moment of the time. It is a big change, an exciting one, very respectful of the fact that a consumer is now in charge of his own experience.

Give us a sense of how you're hoping to bring all these devices together and link it back to the same individual, and what impact this has on the way the media understands.

First of all, we have more data than ever before. Televisions are connected to the internet, phones are connected to the networks, set top boxes from cable companies can give us return path data, so we have many data sources that can give us a starting point. There's still a lot of error in that data, there is still a chance of double counting and reconciliation to the same person is hard. So, we use an actual panel of people who agree to give us their data and we put the two together to get weighted in a country like India, which is very heterogeneous, weighted in each region, weighted by demographics, to get to a true view of what the audience is doing. But it's been a great effort to reconcile the other advantage we have in measurement because we don't allow anything to be used for targeting. We can use data without violating privacy because we only need enough data to reconcile. It is the same individual. We don't need to know the individual, we don’t track them in any permanent way. This is very unique for us too especially in a privacy-centric world.

What are your plans for bringing this service to India?

We've been talking to many players in India - to the networks, to the advertisers and agencies. You have an organization called BARC, which measures the linear side. We’ve already been measuring digital with Nielsen's digital ad ratings. We've been talking about how these things can all come together. Of course, there needs to be an agreement. Nielsen can't do it unilaterally, but I think we're showing everyone a way to do this with integrity and transparency that builds the treasury in the market. We're getting some enthusiasm so it's certainly a big project for us this year to continue to focus on India and bring people together.

How aligned is the marketplace for the idea that there must be one connected measurement linking back to an individual and not based on which device you consuming the content on?

From the buyers, from the advertisers and the agencies, they're very aligned globally with the world federation of advertisers. They are aligned with the big global companies. This is important because ultimately they're trying to reach people for the people in the media sector. I think it was intellectual agreement. Of course, the business model can change because when you're measuring it together you're broadening the pie and I think people will want to work through this in a transparent way. I was really impressed by some of your government officials. Your I&B Ministry is really very thoughtful about this and so I find the movement is in the right direction in India. The enormous advances in India in technology and the growth of mobile networks have made it even more important. But I think we still need to work together on the details.

How do you view a lot of these charges that come out from civil society about ratings being meaningless?

I don't know enough to comment today. The problem you describe is solvable. This is what something Nielsen does around the world because there's a lot of things you have to do about it, keeping panellists’ secret, not publishing information, there's a lot we need to do with cyber security. We applied to Nielsen a lot of the tools that we learn from banking. We have a lot of people who come to us from banks to understand all the compliance things you do in the financial system. We need a similar structure that is transparent and accountable and auditable in ratings.

A lot of media operations are platform-based. What is the way forward?

Yes, but i think it's by form. it's a different engagement . video and audio you can  put together by time in engagement. Print’s a different way of measuring so i don't think it's exactly one thing. should be more interoperable but for now we are focused on one video platform one audio platform and one print and display

What are the big trends that you're picking up in consumption?

Entertainment is increasingly being viewed on demand. People want control of their schedule. This means that sports and live news and live events are emerging as one place left to bring large populations together. In news, it matters if it is breaking and exciting.

Since OTT platforms have disrupted content in such a significant way in India and to some extent abroad it's led to a crisis of confidence amongst Bollywood film producers. What strategic suggestions do you have for content producers?

We do a lot with content producers and with studios in Bollywood and Hollywood. I think that producers of content are going to have to understand the audience better than ever before. So, they're getting more insights because the audiences are more heterogeneous. You need to find your audience as opposed to just getting it on the linear schedule or in the theatre. Secondly, be discovered and so we have a second business within Nielsen called grace note which is to tag every movie and every episode of the TV series. We're spending a lot of time with studios on how you market in an OTT world to get discovered, to be rising up in the recommendation engine and to make sure once people have watched some of your episodes they get recommendations for other episodes or other shows. This is different from way films were marketed in the past.

We're seeing in the US a raging fight between OTT platforms like Amazon and measurement companies. But a lot of these platforms think we can do our own measurement, we don't need somebody from the outside because all the data that's required is actually available in-house.

Everyone's data is only their own. So why do Netflix and YouTube use Nielsen? Because they need to know what people are watching when they are not watching them.

This is what everyone is figuring out in 2023. We have a lot of growth in OTT. It doesn't go forever. At the end of the day, there are only 7 billion people in the world and only 24 hours in a day. So, it is fixed and, therefore, you are competing for a share. When you're competing for share, the more you know about your share and someone else's share, is how you compete to gain the share.

We had Sir Martin Sorrell. The point that he was making was his sense is that Artificial Intelligence will disrupt and make media planning companies redundant as they exist at this moment. What trends are you picking up and do you see a lot of technology disrupting the way in which the sectors function so far?

I think the media planners and buyers are reinventing themselves. They’re being more strategic and more thoughtful about the audience. It’s that AI only knows what you teach it. You still need human creativity, you still need to think outside the box. I think it's a very exciting time because I think some of the boring work can be handed to the robot and the planners and buyers can do really interesting work.

In the manner in which companies are spending their dollars, what are the things you're looking out for most carefully this year?

Of course, there is a global recession, there's an energy problem, and there's a war in Europe. This is causing people to be cautious and some are really just doing promotion and not so much brand-building. I worry about this because the economy does have cycles of growth. India is really interesting because it's the fastest growing country and has an enormous population. So global brands are focused on it and that creates more demand which is exciting. Thirdly, I think because so much of the content is streaming people are really eager in the advertising world to be sure that we get to a single measure so that they can find the people in all of that noise.