When journalistic standards drop, many stop following news: David Kenny

David Kenny, head of Nielsen, talks to Vanita Kohli-Khandekar during his visit to India this week

David Kenny, 61, the head of the (estimated revenue) $3.5 billion Nielsen, one of the world’s largest audience analytics companies, is at the centre of every major disruption the media business is seeing. Earlier this week, Nielsen launched a consolidated metric for measuring linear (television) and on-demand (streaming) audiences. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar spoke to Kenny on his visit to India this week. Edited excerpts: 

What are your priorities and challenges?  

Our number one passion is to evolve the methodology so we can do streaming and linear together in both video and audio. Ultimately what we are really measuring is time. Everybody thinks we are growing. But the reality is the global population of 7 billion grows less than 1 per cent a year. However, the time growth is zero. There are only 24 hours a day for every person no matter how much technology and connected devices you have. The most valuable thing in the world is human time. And my mission is that we measure time as accurately and consistently as possible. I can’t say the time spent with digital is worth more or less than the time spent with broadcast, or that the time spent on video games is more than that on passive entertainment. My worry is to make sure we have got a handle and insight on where human time is spent.

Where are we on having a blended metric, one that works across TV and digital?

Today, January 11, we began releasing this data in the US with a product called Nielsen One. It measures second by second what people are watching on linear and broadcast. Every six seconds we show what people are watching on video and broadcast together. It moves away from the notion of what is linear and streaming. Historically TV and radio ratings were done on a schedule, like prime time ratings, 9 pm to 11 pm, or dry time ratings, 7 to 9 am. But ratings make sense if you watch on schedule; online everything is screened on-demand. So we had to walk away from that and do an impression rating. In 24 hours a day, what was your market share of that day and what was the frequency. For the digital players it means they are measured consistently. For the traditional players it means the power of the schedule is not what it used to be.

In India the Broadcast Audience Research Council tried to put together a combined metric for years but getting the big digital players on board was tough. How has it worked for Nielsen One?

When Netflix launched their ad-sponsored model, they committed to having it measured by Nielsen Rating. YouTube in the United States is committed to be always on – meaning all YouTube inventory is Nielsen-rated. Amazon Prime is using Nielsen rating, particularly as it gets into sports. It was important that we show our independence and commitment to just measuring time and not metrics that favored linear over digital, or vice versa. As a result of that, advertisers wanted it and, as a result of that, everyone came on board. And I feel it will work in other markets.

Will work in a market like India?

Yes, it will. As the cost of media goes up, the demand for measurement will be very strong.

When are you rolling it out in other parts of the world and in India?

We will be rolling it out in Europe, the Middle East, Mexico. But it only rolls out when we can get agreements between advertisers, agencies, digital networks and broadcasters. I can’t give you a date in India but am meeting with all those parties and there is interest.

How do you build in something like short video and social media into a cross-media metric?

We are measuring short videos because we are measuring share of time. People watch short videos for 30, 60, [or] 90 minutes. It is sort of like watching television. Your engagement is high throughout. What we don’t do is attribution – connecting an action to a social media post, like, ‘I saw this tweet and changed my mind or bought something’. Social gets a lot of time, but it is an outside influence. We do special studies on that. But it is not in the rating. The best you can do is a weather forecast: it is 80 per cent likely that this action was caused by that tweet or that Instagram post.

Can digital be used to build a brand? Marketers in India grapple with it given how transactional it is.

Digital is about the way it is delivered versus broadcast. A consumer on a connected TV doesn’t know the difference whether [a show is] on Amazon Prime or on a linear channel, except that if it came on demand, it was more convenient. If it was ad-sponsored, of course, you can build a brand. Anyone who treats connected TV as a banner ad, which is what digital was 10 years ago, instead of like a commercial TV is missing a point: connected TV is TV.

What are the big trends you see globally?

One, in developed markets like the US and EU, streaming is now bigger than cable. It is more than half the households in the US. Two, sports is becoming the most valuable component of programming. When all that streaming is being viewed on demand, the only chance to reach a big population all at the same time is when they are all watching a sport. That makes sports even more valuable than ever at building a brand. Three, standards -- measurement standards, but there is also a lot of work being done around journalistic standards. There is a concern. When journalistic standards drop, people stop following news.

What is it that a Nielsen could do? How could this play out?

If there are real editorial standards, we could begin to classify what is news and what is opinion, and actually rate it that way. There is a lot of work around brand safety. There is a group for responsible media – advertiser-driven – and they say we will only advertise on news that meets journalistic standards. There is a converse movement – a number of advertisers have stopped advertising altogether on cable news in America. You need to get them back with brand safety.

How does Nielsen deal with pressures from media companies where egos tend to be big? Measurement firms in India have had a tough time with accusations of scams. 

We take our mission seriously – our purpose is to power a better media future for everyone. The way to do that is to create trust and transparency, and make sure the math, the science, the rigour, and the empirical evidence back up what we are doing. Generally, when someone is complaining, there is someone on the other side who is not, who is perfectly fine. We have to know that. When your customer is a media company, they can use the media to negotiate. Whenever somebody raises a concern we listen, use facts to respond and investigate.

The ubiquity of the internet means that media is now a 24-hour, 360-degree wrap. How does that change the demands made on Nielsen?  

Yes, the consumer is always on. People don’t have leisure time, work time, sleep time. They have time. This means we need to measure 24 hours a day. It means we have had to bring in more data sets: from set-top boxes, direct integrations with servers, return path data, smart TV, smart phone panels. It requires a huge ramp up in computing time and skill sets to sort out what is data and what is noise. Secondly, trying to move away from doing things by day parts and just measure share of day. That changes the way the pricing is done, media planning is done. So we do a lot more work helping our buyers and sellers understand how to transact in this world.