Nielsen integrates Digital Ad Ratings for YouTube ad campaigns

Nielsen is beefing up its YouTube advertising support, announcing today its “always on” Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) will now measure YouTube video ad campaigns.

The Nielsen DAR integration – an expansion of DAR coverage for YouTube and YouTube TV – aims to help YouTube advertisers simplify the campaign measurement process. Marketers leveraging “always on” DAR will have more impressions data for delivering ads to their targeted audiences, Nielsen says.

Advertisers will also better understand reach and manage frequency – without having to manually tag or enable campaigns. And they can gauge a YouTube campaign’s performance across multiple platforms, including desktop, mobile and connected TV.

“By enabling continuous ‘always on’ measurement on YouTube, we’re helping advertisers to get a better understanding of one of the leading and largest ad supported platforms,” stated Kim Gilberti, SVP of product management at Nielsen.

“By achieving true cross-channel comparability, this marks an important milestone in Nielsen’s steady march toward delivering Nielsen ONE, which will provide a comparable, deduplicated view into the channels and platforms all audiences consume, across all screens,” she went on to say.

Other companies have integrated Nielsen DAR, including Tubi and Studio71. Roku, which acquired Nielsen’s advanced video advertising business in 2021, incorporated DAR onto its OneView ad-buying platform.

Deduplication – the elimination of redundant audience data – is a relevant topic in the advertising space, as it helps marketers more precisely understand who is watching their ads.

Nielsen in July launched Four-Screen Ad Deduplication, which analyzes YouTube audience reach across traditional TV, CTV, desktop and mobile. Roku also just tapped Nielsen to expand four-screen media measurement.

YouTube is building up its advertising options, particularly for short form content. The platform recently announced starting next year, YouTube Shorts creators will be eligible for content monetization.

According to YouTube, Shorts have over 1.5 billion signed-in users per month and more than 30 billion daily views.

Parent company Google is enhancing CTV advertising, updating its digital ad campaign platform to include Nielsen DAR audience guarantees.

As for Nielsen, it’s continuing to make moves in audience measurement. Amazon has tasked Nielsen to provide full coverage of Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football games. Nielsen reported the season premiere of Thursday Night Football drew 13 million U.S. viewers.

Nielsen is also in the midst of being acquired by Elliott Management. The companies secured regulatory approval in August, and the transaction is set to close in the coming weeks. The New York Stock Exchange on Monday issued a delisting notice, indicating Nielsen shares would be suspended on October 12.