Comscore and Nielsen made streaming-related announcements Thursday, heating up competition in their bid to be the premier cross-platform measurement provider.
Comscore and Dish Media, which first forged a partnership in 2012, have struck a deal to extend their data license to virtual MVPD Sling TV. This deal gives Comscore the ability to measure all of Sling TV in addition to the national addressable on Dish, which the company said makes it one of the first independent measurement services to win the rights to do so on both footprints.
Additionally, Comscore will provide dynamic ad insertion measurement of addressable advertising on Dish’s video on-demand content delivered on set-top-boxes, Dish Anywhere, and on third-party OTT apps that require Dish log-in credentials.
By leveraging the de-identified viewership data now accessible through this partnership, Comscore claims it will be able to accelerate an industry-wide shift to census based audience measurement across linear and OTT programming.
"Comscore's new partnership with DISH Media continues our company's significant steps in our transformation of television and cross-platform measurement of linear and OTT, as we have built the largest viewing dataset of second-by-second viewership data that is aggregated across all premium video providers from the device, to the household, to zip code, to the market and to the nation," said Comscore CEO Bill Livek in a statement.
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Nielsen’s OTT announcement involves the launch of Nielsen Streaming Video Ratings, a new tool that will capture and deliver insights into the proportion of streaming happening on TV screens, the type of devices being used, and how different types of audiences stream.
Additionally, the tool will include an analysis and comparison of 10 streaming platforms and seven categories of apps including subscription-based, ad-supported, network, social and gaming as well as multichannel video programming distributors and vMVPD apps.
Specific streaming providers have not yet been named.
According to Nielsen, the tool is intended to provide a more holistic view of total TV time, helping media buyers and sellers make better decisions when accessing ad investments, competition, and audience composition.
"By 2024, it's estimated that streaming platforms will have amassed 210 million subscribers, which represents a staggering number of consumers and a major shift in media habits," said Kevin Rini, senior vice president of product management at Nielsen, in a statement. "Now more than ever, it's important for our clients to have a clear understanding of the streaming landscape, both from a program or content perspective, which our SVOD service does, as well as at a macro view of audience consumption that takes into account the total use of streaming platforms comparable to linear TV."