Nielsen switches on daily Digital Content Ratings

The milestone places Australia at the forefront of global digital measurement

• 19 million Australians consume digital content daily
• Digital video consumption averages over 25 hours per month for adults

IAB Australia and Nielsen have today switched on Digital Content Ratings (DCR), providing publishers, agencies and marketers with daily digital audience data for the first time. The move comes after a lengthy period of negotiation between Australian digital publishers and will be at the forefront of a push to secure a larger portion of the advertising budgets of Australian advertisers.

The milestone places Australia once again at the forefront of global digital measurement.

Monique Perry, head of Nielsen’s media industry group, previewed the launch on Mediaweek TV on Sky News Business last week (watch below, or on Mediaweek’s website here).

Yesterday media were given a preview of how the new measurement system works. Today the advertising market will see a presentation explaining how it works and the benefits associated with it.

As Perry told Mediaweek, this is a world first in that, to-date, only the US and Thailand have launched daily digital measurement, and those markets have restricted measurement to video only initially.

Nielsen Digital Content Ratings provides the Australian media industry with a daily view of how many people consume content across all key digital devices and complements Nielsen’s existing Digital Ratings (Monthly) measurement solution.

DCR also complements Nielsen’s existing Digital Ad Ratings measurement solution, ensuring consistency between the measurement of digital content and advertising performance – daily.

The Bundanoon-based research guru John Grono attended the media launch yesterday and noted that what advertisers were keen on getting was information about the audience using digital, not just traffic reports. There isn’t a market sector Grono hasn’t consulted to including the IAB and he is a former longtime Nielsen research executive.

Also attending the briefing was IAB director of research Gai Le Roy who offered some insights into the data collected so far in testing. The first daily data, collected today, will be available Friday this week. From then on there will be daily reports available to data subscribers.

IAB CEO Vijay Solanki said, “The Australian digital industry – which now accounts for half of all advertising spend – has always been world leading in the area of digital measurement. DCR is a game changer for the industry because it is daily, people-based and independent. It’s good for publishers and gives more precision to advertisers. It also helps create more transparency and more confidence for digital.”

Nicole Sheffield, chairperson of IAB Australia and chief digital officer, News Corp Australia, said, “The daily trading metrics will enable publishers and agencies to pivot and take action during campaigns and respond to daily brief cycles. This brings digital in line with other media reporting daily ratings metrics. Importantly, DCR also measures ‘off-platform’ audiences, meaning for the first time as a publisher, I can attribute audiences consuming content off-platform to my overall unique audience number. No other media measurement system allows marketers to count people consuming content on third-party platforms, and also attribute people back to the content originator.”

Alex Parsons, Nine’s chief digital and marketing officer, said: “The move to daily ratings represents an important milestone and is a clear sign of the increasing maturity of the Australian digital space. With more demographic and visitation data, digital publishers will be more empowered than ever to better provide marketers and their agencies the data they require to make more informed choices about where they invest.”

Clive Dickens, chief digital officer, Seven West Media, added: “Digital Content Ratings responds to the constantly changing and increasingly complex online ecosystem. Daily data is a game changer, and we are very much looking forward to seeing the inclusion of Seven West Media’s video in the coming period to add further independent measurement of our digital assets.”

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