But what does authentic, inclusive brand engagement look like? 

According to Nielsen 2024 Annual Marketing Report, 70% of marketers reported planning to prioritize performance marketing over brand-building initiatives this year. With marketing dollars at a premium, brands need to understand where and how to invest to earn the good will of the LGBTQ+ community and demonstrate inclusivity well beyond June. 

Investing in inclusive advertising and content

Not surprisingly, audiences like to see themselves in the content and ads they watch. In fact, Nielsen research shows that 42% of U.S. adults say it makes them more likely to buy from a brand when they are represented in a campaign¹. But among LGBTQ+ audiences, 63% feel their identity group is misrepresented in media.

And the feeling of misrepresentation can be even higher among intersectional identities like the Black queer community, with seven in 10 often feeling misrepresented.

There’s reason behind this sentiment. A recent GLAAD study found that 36% of LGBTQ+ scripted characters across broadcast, cable and streaming won’t be returning. For brands, supporting representative content through their advertising can be both an opportunity to demonstrate support of the LGBTQ+ community and resonate with this engaged audience. 

“We exist in all spaces in the real world, and so we should exist in all stories in all types of television and we know that inclusive content is a win for all audiences,” said Megan Townsend, Senior Director, Entertainment Research and Analysis at GLAAD, in a recent Nielsen webinar.

Understanding the inclusive ad landscape

To better understand how inclusive content is currently helping brands connect with LGBTQ+ consumers, we looked at four programs centering LGBTQ+ talent among their hosts or cast members and the brands that advertise within these programs. 

Karamo, a syndicated talk show distributed by local broadcast stations across the country, and Rachel Maddow, a cable news and commentary program, both feature LGBTQ+ talent on their programs and pharmaceutical companies as their top advertisers. Nielsen Scarborough research found that LGBTQ+ consumers are 62% more likely than the general population to request a specific drug be prescribed by their doctor as a result of a recent health care ad, and Black LGBTQ+ consumers are 59% more likely to make an appointment to see a doctor as a result of a recent health care ad.

But health care isn’t the only industry that is connecting with LGBTQ+ audiences. A home improvement brand is the top advertiser for My Lottery Dream Home—a good fit for the non-scripted real estate program featuring LGBTQ+ talent. More than a quarter (27.2%) of LGBTQ+ consumers report recently shopping for home improvement items online.

The next biggest advertiser for My Lottery Dream Home is a consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand. A CPG brand is also the biggest advertiser for RuPaul’s Drag Race, a reality competition program featuring drag queens. The CPG space is competitive. Nielsen Scarborough research found that 38% of LGBTQ+ consumers agreed they are willing to shop multiple stores to find the best deals. To improve ad campaigns and beat out the competition, advertisers need the right data. 

Optimizing campaigns to resonate with LGBTQ+ audiences

For brands looking to connect with LGBTQ+ consumers, it’s important to do more than just show up in the right place. They need to show up at the right time—and that means beyond a single month. Brand support for the LGBTQ+ community beyond Pride Month is crucial to avoid appearing gimmicky or doing more harm than good and alienting communities with “rainbow capitalism.” 

Brands also need to ensure their messages resonate. Ads need to authentically represent the diverse identities of LGBTQ+ community and avoid stereotypes and caricatures. Our research found that 50.5% of LGBTQ+ audiences agree that avoiding stereotyping individuals in advertising and programming will help improve inclusivity. But ensuring genuine representation requires accurate data to inform your strategy.

Effective measurement strategies include and go beyond inclusivity metrics to understand audience nuances and make advertising more seamless. Consumer insights, such as those from Nielsen Scarborough, are essential for understanding consumers’ mindsets and staying current with trends. And competitive data can help you understand how other brands are splitting their spend across channels or tailoring their creative to optimize your own media strategy. Nielsen’s Ad Intel solution monitors detailed ad spend from all the major players—industry by industry, program by program, month after month.

With the right data, brands can understand if they’re investing in the right place, at the right time and with the right messages to engage LGBTQ+ consumers throughout the year.  

Learn more about LGBTQ+ consumers in our recent webinar: Building brand loyalty with LGBTQ+ audiences.

Notes

¹Nielsen Attitudes on Representation on TV Study, 2022
²Nielsen Attitudes on Representation Study, 2023

The post Beyond Pride Month: Building your brand with LGBTQ+ consumers appeared first on Nielsen.

Webinar

Building brand loyalty with LGBTQ+ audiences

LGBTQ+ consumers welcome brand engagement—provided it’s done in an authentic and inclusive way. Watch our latest webinar and learn how to build brand loyalty with LGBTQ+ audiences.  

Watch the webinar

Webinar

Building brand loyalty with LGBTQ+ audiences

LGBTQ+ consumers welcome brand engagement—provided it’s done in an authentic and inclusive way. Watch our latest webinar and learn how to build brand loyalty with LGBTQ+ audiences.  

Watch the webinar

Driving authentic affinity with LGBTQ+ consumers

With continued economic uncertainty and increased expectations for data-driven results, marketing teams are being pressed to prove impact and in many cases choosing to lean into performance marketing as a result. But marketers can’t lose sight of their audience—building brand loyalty can drive increased sales if done authentically.

While some brands are reportedly taking a lighter approach to LGBTQ+ marketing this PRIDE month, Nielsen research shows that LGBTQ+ consumers are open to brand engagement that’s authentic and inclusive. Brands that actively support LGBTQ+ causes and demonstrate inclusivity can build strong loyalty. 

In this webinar, Stacie deArmas, SVP, Diverse Insights & Initiatives, Nielsen, shares the value of brand building and how to earn brand affinity with LGBTQ+ consumers. She is joined by Megan Townsend, Senior Director, Entertainment Research & Analysis, GLAAD, who shares research and resources for brands to better connect with LGBTQ+ audiences.

Learn more about…

The need for brand building

LGBTQ+ consumers’ expectations for brands

How to earn brand affinity

68%

of LGBTQ+ consumers report encountering irrelevant advertising

Source: Nielsen Trust in Media Study, March 2024

72%

of the LGBTQ+ community agree that they will stop purchasing from brands that devalue their community

Source: Nielsen Attitudes on Representation Study, 2023

1/4

of Black LGBTQ+ audiences are comfortable with targeted advertising

Source: Nielsen’s International LGBTQ+ Report, 2022

The post Building brand loyalty with LGBTQ+ audiences through inclusive advertising and content appeared first on Nielsen.

Advanced audience targeting has been around for a long time for many digital channels. But in today’s complex multichannel world, targeting one channel at a time doesn’t cut it anymore. Modern marketers expect to define their custom audiences one time and activate them uniformly across media—from the open web to social, retail media, FAST, CTV and addressable linear. They also expect their measurement solutions to keep up and measure performance with enough granularity to capture those audiences. 

Building high-performing advanced audiences has never been more urgent, especially in the context of the on-again, off-again deprecation of cookie-based targeting systems. 

Thankfully, the industry is responding with exciting new data solutions. At Nielsen, we’ve developed a measurement-grade identity graph and a comprehensive digital ID system to help marketers like you quickly onboard their first-party data, cross-check the quality of their data records, and enrich those records with highly-relevant new attributes.

Let’s examine the benefits of advanced audiences with a few examples connected to CTV.

Cats, kids and touchdowns

Imagine you’re looking to reach Gen Z cat owners (perhaps you’re a pet food company interested in reaching consumers in U.S. college towns); Millennials with young kids (great for toys, food delivery or theme park vacations); or Baby Boomers who are NFL superfans (think beer, cars or banking). Is CTV a good investment for your media spend?

According to data analyzed through Nielsen Media Impact (NMI), advanced audiences don’t necessarily spend more time on CTV devices and platforms than the norm. On average, Gen Z, Millennials and Boomers spend about the same amount of time every day with CTV—a little more than two hours—and owning a cat (for Gen Zers) or being an NFL superfan (for Boomers) doesn’t really make a difference. 

But the story is very different for Millennials with young kids who spend over seven hours a day streaming CTV content, more than 3X as much as their peers without young kids at home.

That doesn’t mean, however, that all CTV platforms will perform equally well for brands looking to capitalize on that opportunity. And, conversely, that there’s not a single CTV platform that can move the needle for the other two groups, Gen Z cat owners and NFL superfan Boomers. 

Finding a home on CTV

None of the top CTV platforms in the U.S. show a big bias for one generation or another.  They don’t all have the same reach, of course, as the NMI data below clearly illustrate. But if a platform reaches 30% of the Gen Z population in a given month, it also reaches 30% of the Millennial population, with Gen Xers (not shown) and Boomers only slightly behind.

But the story changes when we examine reach for the three advanced audiences in our planning tool. HBO Max, for instance, reached 26.4% of Gen Z cat owners in October 2023, compared with 20.6% for all Gen Z. Disney+ reached 56.4% of all Millennials with young kids, compared to 32.6% among all Millennials. The chart below shows those gaps in index form (56.4/32.6 = 173 index, for example), clearly highlighting what platforms would be good candidates to reach each of those advanced audiences.

One word about NFL superfan Boomers. They’re harder to reach on CTV than other Boomers because they’re spending a lot of their TV time on linear TV. But we can already see a number of platforms faring well thanks to their relationship with rights-holding broadcast networks or other exclusive and non-exclusive NFL streaming agreements.

So many choices, so little time

To keep up with consumers and fast-changing market conditions, marketers today need media planning solutions that are rich, consistent, comprehensive and comparable across platforms, not point solutions with vastly different audience definitions and media buying systems.

There’s no time to waste. We’ve assembled custom and syndicated advanced audiences for you to kickstart your media planning, whether you’re working in auto, CPG, retail or dozens of other industries. And since you never want to buy media you can’t measure, we’ve embedded our advanced audiences into Nielsen ONE, our industry-leading cross-media measurement solution.

The post A look at how CTV reach and viewership trends shift across generations appeared first on Nielsen.

The AANHPHI audience brings $1.3 trillion buying power and is the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. With more media platforms available than ever before, understanding how and where AANHPI audiences are consuming content is critical for brands and businesses.  While Asian Americans spend less total time with media than any other segment of the U.S. population, they are heavy users of digital media, including streaming. For marketers figuring out how to incorporate streaming into their media plans, Asian Americans could be a key audience to focus on.

Streaming gains share with Asian American TV use

As reported in Nielsen’s most recent Diverse Intelligence Series report, Asian audiences 18 and older in the U.S. spend 17.5 hours with TV in a given week. While this is less than the 32 hours spent weekly by the general population, AANHPI audiences spend a larger percentage of their overall TV time with streaming. In January 2024, streaming made up 45.4% of Asian Americans’ TV usage, compared with 36.0% for the general U.S. population, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge^TM.  

Year over year, Asian Americans’ use of streaming grew 5.6% from January 2023. And streaming continues to gain ground. In March 2024, streaming rose to 48.2% of AANHPI audiences’ total TV time. 

The good news for advertisers is that Asian Americans are leaning into ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) viewing, which made up 31% of their streaming as of January 2024, compared with 27% for the total population. 

AANHPI streaming use stretches across devices

Beyond TV, AANHPI viewers spend 17 hours per week with their smartphones–which is in line with the total population. However, AANHPI audiences’ level of engagement with mobile devices represents more than a third of their total media time.

On smartphones, Asians outpace other viewers for using streaming platform apps—especially ad-supported ones. In an average month, YouTube’s mobile app reaches 85% of AANHPI adults. Sling TV is also particularly appealing with its international TV content, especially in South Asian and East Asian languages. AANHPI viewers are 37% more likely to use the app than the general population.

Incorporating streaming into your media plans

The reality is that audiences of ad-supported streaming platforms continue to grow. For example, in February 2024, YouTube captured 9.3% of TV usage, a platform-best. But not all audiences are adopting at the same pace. While age and gender have traditionally been the focus driving media buys, advanced audience segments can help marketers better plan to reach audiences that are leaning in. 

The media consumption behaviors of the AANHPI audiences don’t follow traditional norms. For example, Asians 50+ spend the most time on connected TV devices compared to other groups who tend to watch more linear TV. Given that Asian Americans are heavy streamers, advertisers can focus on engaging this audience across ad-supported streaming platforms as part of their cross-media campaigns.

Learn more about the value of streaming within a cross-media campaign in Nielsen’s 2024 Annual Marketing Report.

The post Asian American audiences are leaders in streaming media use appeared first on Nielsen.

2024 Diverse Intelligence Series

Reaching Asian American Audiences

Understanding Asian influence and media consumption

The Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) are a valuable group for marketers to engage. Understanding their media preferences is critical to resonating in the long term with this diverse community.

Download the report

2024 Diverse Intelligence Series

Reaching Asian
American Audiences

Understanding Asian influence
and media consumption

The Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) are a valuable group for marketers to engage. Understanding their media preferences is critical to resonating in the long term with this diverse community.

Download the report

Growing in influence and power

The AANHPI community consists of about 22 million people with roots in more than 20 countries, each with unique cultures, languages and experiences. Brands, media platforms and community organizations looking to reach this diverse and growing population need to understand better who they are, what they care about and how they’re spending.

The number of U.S. AANHPI in 2060 will be more than 3x the 2000 population

Asian Americans have tremendous buying power: with $1.3 trillion and growing

Almost two-thirds of AANHPI people will stop buying from brands that devalue their community

Data sources: U.S. Census, Selig Center for Economic Growth, and Nielsen Attitudes on Representation Study 2024

Download the report

Meeting AANHPI consumers where they are watching and spending

This report dives into the spending and media habits of Asian American audiences to help marketers engage in ways that resonate.

A powerful consumer group

Asian Americans have tremendous spending capabilities, with a median household income of $104,646, well above average income for the U.S.

AANHPI audiences are super streamers

Compared to the general population, Asian Americans spend less time with traditional media channels. Streaming, however, stands out as an area of opportunity. Asian Americans are voracious streaming consumers, with 45.4% of total TV time spent with streaming services.

Representation resonates for long-term ROI

Representation goes a long way toward creating trust with AANHPI audiences, ultimately building brand affinity and delivering long-term returns on your investment (ROI) with this community.

Download the report

Download the report

The post Reaching Asian American Audiences 2024 appeared first on Nielsen.

Follow along as we break down what advanced audiences are, why they matter and how they’re changing the ad world.

What’s an advanced audience?

In traditional media spaces, the standard demographic filters used to understand and reach audiences has been age and gender. Advanced audiences can go well beyond these basic demos. 

Advanced audiences, sometimes called custom audiences, are consumer segments marketers use to group people together based on where they live, what they buy or intend to buy, how much money they make, the media they consume, the communities they’re part of, and so on. Marketers bring these audience lists to advertising platforms so they can reach them there with specific messaging. 

The idea is that by narrowing down the group of recipients, you’re able to get hyper-targeted with your campaigns so they’re more likely to resonate. You increase effectiveness and reduce wasted spend by only reaching the folks who will likely care about what you’re selling, and you’re also able to see exactly how well campaigns performed within these groups. What you sacrifice in mass reach, you make up for in increased relevance. 

Advanced audience segments are built from first, second or third-party data, or some combination of the three, which we’ll get into in the next section. 

Once you have your advanced audience lists, you can build lookalike audiences that expand your initial group based on their commonalities. For example, if everybody in your initial advanced audience list cares about pets and uses TikTok, then a lookalike audience will include people who also care about pets and use TikTok. 

What do you need to create advanced audiences? 

Advanced audiences sound great, right? Now let’s look at how you actually build them. 

The first and most important step is securing your data.

First-party data

First-party data is audience information collected directly from the consumer, by the brand. 

Brands with the ability to collect their own audience data have an upper hand. Since it’s controlled by the brand and gathered straight from the source (in this case the audience), brands are able to easily expand what information gets captured with every channel interaction, new purchase, survey response or chatbot conversation. 
The value of first-party data is exactly why so many brands create incentives for consumers to engage within their ecosystems. Sign up and get 20% off your next purchase. Create an account and see your personalized list of recommendations. Login to track your order delivery.

Second-party data

Of course, not every brand has access to first-party data. It may be hard to convince the general population to login into a soda provider’s website to order their next 12-pack. These brands may rely on second-party data, which is another’s company’s first-party data that’s acquired through a partnership. 

Third-party data 

While first and second-party data is collected directly from the audience, third-party data can come from several sources and is available for anyone to purchase. This is also the data pool most directly affected by the loss of cookies, forcing data providers to find reliable alternatives to digitally identify audiences. 

By combining proprietary Nielsen audience data (we have tens of thousands of advanced audience segments) with first-party data from our partners, Nielsen helps brands get a more comprehensive view of their ideal consumer and sharpen their campaign targeting capabilities. 

Insights are only as good as the data they’re built on. Since third-party data is gathered externally, brands should prioritize working with trusted partners who can prove the accuracy of what they deliver. 

Once you have your audience data, you can create advanced audience lists and upload them across platforms to begin targeting your campaign creative. While this is a relatively straightforward and standardized process across most digital platforms, other channels are playing catch up. 

Where can you use advanced audiences?  

Advanced audience targeting first became a thing online thanks to the level of detail our digital footprints leave behind. Through digital identifiers, like usernames and browsing histories, marketers are able to tap into rich levels of consumer insight: who they are, what they want to consume and what they do after seeing an ad.  All of these inputs help marketers create resonant campaigns for groups as niche as their data allows—informing everything from the creative to the timing and placement. It also helped digital platforms and publishers prove their ability to reach the exact audiences their clients cared about. 

Traditional media like broadcast and cable may have unbeatable reach, but digital media is all about precision. At least that’s been the historical trade-off. But as the world has gone digital, there are new and heightened expectations for all channels to support the same level of audience addressability and performance accountability. 

In the past decade, traditional media have carved out new outlets to dynamically address advertising to advanced audiences, like connected TV (CTV), free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels and data-driven linear¹. Still, there are foundational differences in how readily these channels can support planning and measuring against niche audience segments.  

The next phase of advanced audiences will be ensuring standardized utility no matter the medium. This will require system overhauls to prioritize interoperability²— with the end goal being that the audience defined is the audience reached.  

How do advanced audiences work at Nielsen? 

Supporting this interoperability vision is at the heart of Nielsen’s strategy. We are acutely aware of the headaches a fragmented media environment creates for all sides of the media industry. It’s harder to reach specific audiences and manage how often they see your campaigns. Comprehensive planning and activation feels impossible as everything gets brought down to channel specifics. 

But what if traditional media consistently operated with the same level of insight and personalization as digital? What if you could bring your own audiences to every platform and use them for planning, measurement and optimization?

Within the Nielsen ecosystem, you’re able to bring your own IDs or choose from audience segments developed from our cross-channel big data sets calibrated by gold-standard people panels. All audience data then goes through the Nielsen Identity System to ensure a deduplicated view of the audience across all screens and channels. What’s more, you’re able to reuse these audiences across all integrated Nielsen products and ensure audiences definitions are consistent across the entire user journey. Using the same defined audience, you’re able to build your media plans based on tailored insights and forecasting, purchase media, and get a deduplicated view of how well you reached your audience across channels.

Depending on where you are in the world, all of this is available today with Nielsen. But we are just getting started. Advanced audiences are now at the center of this brave, new advertising world, and Nielsen is here to help you thrive in it. 

Notes

¹Data-driven linear is a process marketers use to allocate linear TV programming spend against demos beyond age and gender.
²Interoperability, in this instance, is when different technological systems interact with each other seamlessly. For example, being able to send and receive emails across all providers is interoperability at work.

The post Need to Know: What is advanced audience targeting and why is it important? appeared first on Nielsen.

While prices may be higher, the extra spending could pay off even for non-political advertisers. News programming typically sees a boost in viewership during election years. U.S. News viewership in 2020 was extraordinarily high due to COVID coverage, social unrest and a tight election. But even during the mid-year election in 2022, both broadcast and cable news programming saw audiences spending more time with news than the non-election years 2021 and 2023. 

Time spent with news differs across demos 

Understanding consumption habits can help you reach the right audiences on the right media. With 24-hour news programming, it’s not surprising that Americans spent more time with cable news than broadcast news in 2023. When we look at total time spent by gender, both genders follow the trends for the population as a whole. However, while men watched slightly (5.7%) more minutes of cable news than women, women watched 47.7% more minutes of broadcast news than men.

Black viewers spend the most time with TV in general, including news programming, well ahead of Hispanic and Asian viewers. Both Black and Asian viewers follow the general population pattern, spending more time with cable news programming than broadcast. In this, Hispanic viewers are the outlier, spending slightly more annual minutes with broadcast news than cable. Advertisers looking to influence women and Hispanic voters shouldn’t overlook the power of traditional broadcast news.

News programming access is expanding 

How viewers are accessing both broadcast and cable is changing. Americans are increasingly using over-the-air (OTA) and over-the-top (OTT) devices, including virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs), such as YouTubeTV, Sling TV and Hulu+ Live TV, to access TV programming. Household vMVPD subscriptions have increased year-over-year for the last three years, growing from 12.1% of all U.S. TV households in December 2021 to 16.5% in December 2023¹. And news viewing on vMVPDs follows a similar trend. 

The increase in vMVPD viewership hints at a larger shift of audiences toward digital and connected TV (CTV). And these media will likely capture big ad dollars as part of this election cycle–eMarketer forecasts digital political ad spend will hit $3.46 billion this year. 

The right media mix is critical to reach voters

To better understand digital trends, we used our Scarborough consumer insights to study how people affiliated with different political parties use the internet or apps to consume video content. Reaching independent voters will be critical for political campaigns eager to earn votes from undecided audiences. And understanding how they report connecting to digital video content can make sure marketers reach them in the right places. 

Those who consider themselves to be independent but say they align closer to the Democrat party are 15% more likely than the average U.S. adult to watch technology news video content on the internet or apps². Beyond news content, these respondents were 17% more likely to watch cartoon videos. Meanwhile, those who consider themselves independent but say they align closer to the Republican party are 15% more likely than the average U.S. adult to watch business news on the internet or apps. Outside of news, they’re 13% more likely to watch sports videos. 

But with Google’s depreciation of cookies in the second half of this year, all advertisers will likely have a harder time reaching the right audiences on digital media. This could cause marketers to shift their ad dollars, including political ad dollars, toward publishers with their own robust first-party data. The programmatic power of CTV is enticing to marketers, but reach is far more complicated in CTV than linear TV because of the commingled nature of the platform and campaign IDs in measurement data. Through that lens, it’s not surprising that only 31% of global marketers say they’re very confident in measuring the ROI of their CTV investments³.

For political marketers, adding radio to the marketing mix could offer valuable incremental reach opportunities for campaigns. Nielsen recently conducted a study of 2022 political campaigns using Nielsen Media Impact. In the competitive 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr. Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman, we found that, by allocating one-fifth of the ad budget to AM/FM radio, the Fetterman campaign was able to deliver a 12% bump in audience reach without increasing spend. With radio’s hyper local listenership, tailoring messaging—and media placements—to the city level can help advertisers reach key demographics.

2024 will present challenges for political and non-political advertisers alike to reach audiences across media. Better understanding how audiences are consuming news content can help them navigate this fragmented landscape successfully. And being creative in your cross-media mix can help drive incremental reach with key audiences.

Source

¹Numbers based on Nielsen’s panel penetration. Nielsen began producing households with a vMVPD Universe Estimate (UE) in July 2023. That UE has increased month-over-month, growing from 15.9% in July 2023 to 16.4% in February 2024.
²Includes types of video content streamed from the Internet on a computer (laptop or desktop), mobile device (smartphone or tablet) or Internet connected device (such as Roku, smart TV, game console, etc.) in the past 30 days.
³Nielsen Annual Marketing Report, 2024.

The post Understanding how audiences connect with news media ahead of the 2024 U.S. elections appeared first on Nielsen.

At Nielsen, we’re committed to innovating on our industry-accepted TV audience measurement to ensure the media industry can trade with confidence. To that end, we’ve invested a decade of research in integrating big data sets into our methodologies in innovative ways that also ensure continuity with our currency measurement. For the ‘24-’25 TV season in the U.S., we have enhanced our Big Data + Panel stream to include Comcast data (in addition to DISH, DirecTV, Roku and Vizio).

Our big data set includes 45 million big data households and 75 million devices, which rivals that of any other measurement provider. By combining (and validating) our big data with our gold-standard panel of approximately 42,000 U.S. homes (including 101,000+ real people), we’re able to leverage the scale and coverage of big data with the granularity and representation of our industry-leading panel for deeper audience insights.

To help the industry navigate the transition, both our Big Data + Panel and Panel measurement data will be available for the coming TV season. And with two views of the U.S. audience for every Nielsen-measured telecast in 2023, we inevitably see some differences. Whenever a measurement sample changes, audience estimates will also change. They may go up or down depending on the individual network, program or telecast, but larger sample sizes facilitate more comprehensive measurement. To help the industry better plan and negotiate around this year’s TV season with Big Data + Panel, we’ve compared average overall TV usage, as well as for programs and genres, for the past year.

How does total TV usage change?

With Big Data + Panel, the total U.S. households using television in 2023 increased slightly across most age groups compared with TV panel data alone. When we break TV usage out by race and ethnicity, we see similar trends. The numbers of Hispanic and Black households using television also generally increased across each age group with Big Data + Panel. Differences in the data sets vary by age groups across all demographics, but each of the three segments showed the most significant increase among older age groups (people 65+).

In addition to understanding how audiences of different age, race and ethnicity shift with Big Data + Panel, understanding changes throughout the day is also important for media planning. When we look at viewing throughout the day, TV usage generally increased slightly during each part of the day. Overnight hours had the smallest increase.

With 45 million big data households and 75 million devices, our Big Data + Panel approach expands coverage and scale. Greater coverage and scale allow for the measurement of even more people and programs. For both buyers and sellers, this opens up more opportunities to understand and engage with viewers. Audiences today are eager to see themselves in both the content and ads on TV, especially Black and Hispanic audiences. Understanding reach across segments and dayparts can help you connect audiences with the right content (and ads) at the right time.  

While the big data brings scale, combining it with our panel data plays a key role in unlocking these audience insights. Our gold-standard panel allows media buyers and sellers to go beyond households to understand the people consuming media. They’re able to ask deeper questions, such as: Who lives in the home? How old are they? What race and ethnicity do they identify as? Who is watching the television at a given point in time? As a result, our Big Data + Panel data stream is able to provide demographic, geographic, over-the-air and broadband only household information, as well as out-of-home (OOH) viewing. 

How do program ratings change?

While overall TV usage overall generally increased across age groups, ratings across individual networks, programs and telecasts vary. Averaging the more than 111,000 programs across broadcast, cable and syndication in 2023, most program ratings saw little to no change or positive change. In fact, among people 2+, 87.5% of programs saw little to no change or positive change in ratings. Similar to overall TV usage, program ratings do differ across age groups, with older demographics seeing more change–both positive and negative.

To understand how the methodology changes impacted different programs, we also looked at programming genres. Across broadcast, cable and syndication, the average monthly percent change between Big Data + Panel and TV panel for people 2+ increased for almost all genres.

With the addition of bigger datasets, our measurement sample does change, and some of the program (and genre) rating changes may reflect these differences in data. However, program ratings also genuinely fluctuate–just as people’s behaviors do. A program’s audience will fluctuate from telecast to telecast, and these averages will reflect some of that natural variability. 

One of the key benefits of adding big data to our panel measurement is enhanced granularity and measurement stability. With deeper data sets comes increasing viewing estimate stability, reducing sampling errors, and reducing the number of programs with no reported viewing (zero ratings). Across broadcast, cable and syndication, the percentage of zero audience programs decreases with additional viewers.

The benefits of Big Data + Panel

Big data does not eliminate variability in the data and we don’t expect it to, as there is real variability in the population. However, our Big Data + Panel approach innovates on our already gold-standard panel data to deliver sensitive and stable ratings overall, resulting in the near elimination of zero ratings and reductions in telecast variability. For publishers, the increased granularity and stability of the Big Data + Panel data stream means more of the national TV inventory is monetizable: increasing from 88% to 99.9%.

For advertisers and agencies, that means more opportunities to connect with audiences. By marrying the scale of big data with person-level information from our panel, we’re able to provide more advanced targeting to unlock the ability to capitalize on linear addressable capabilities, as well as advanced audience segments.

Ultimately, Nielsen believes that a single currency (supported by secondary metrics) results in a more efficient marketplace. But during this period of transition, having both Big Data + Panel and Panel measurement available will help the industry navigate this change and trade with confidence.

Sources

¹Nielsen National TV Panel, October 2023.
²CTV refers to any television that is connected to the internet. The most common use of the internet connection is to stream video content.

The post How audience measurement innovation benefits the media industry appeared first on Nielsen.

While recent hits like Queen Charlotte, The Blackening and They Cloned Tyrone portrayed diverse friend groups, story lines and genres, many Black audiences view the portrayals of their identities as one-dimensional¹. At least part of that sentiment stems from the perception that on-screen urban portrayals remain far more prevalent than rural and suburban portrayals.

But we know that authenticity involves more than character setting. Dimensions of diversity are numerous, spanning well beyond skin tone and narrative location. Seventy percent of Black audiences who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, for example, believe they are misrepresented in media, while 81% of Afro Latinos feel misrepresented¹.

Dimensions of diversity will become even more important considerations in Black representation over time, as the U.S. Census forecasts that one-third of the Black population’s growth through 2060 will come from immigration, adding to the complexity of an already diverse audience. According to our recent Black Diaspora Study, powered by Toluna, an average of 47% of respondents from Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa say they wish they saw more of their identity group on TV.

From a content consumption perspective, the perceptions of representation among Black audiences are critical considerations for the media industry. That’s because they have considerably more media engagement than the general population. They also spend nearly 32% more time with TV each week than the general population². The implications of this level of content engagement spans beyond creators and platforms. They are just as relevant for brands, especially as audiences continue increasing their time with ad-supported video content. 

The right message is critical, and a persona-rich audience highlights the importance of understanding individuals within a diverse community. Our recent Black Diaspora Study found that brands have some ground to gain on this front. That’s because 35.7% of Black Americans believe that brands always represent Black people the same way in advertising, compared with 27.9% among the U.S. general population. The disconnect between how Black audiences feel they’re represented in a campaign could affect the ROI that brands are counting on to fuel growth.

We know that people want to see themselves in advertising, but audiences also want what they see to match what they see through their own eyes. Relevance is critical to engagement across all media types, and global audiences have different perspectives about which media types have the most relevant advertising. Black audiences in Nigeria, the U.K. and South Africa want more relevant ads in traditional and streaming TV content, while Black audiences in Brazil express the most desire for more relevant ads in streaming music.  

Knowing that consumers often seek out brands that champion causes and messages they believe in, relevance, at least to many audiences, has come to represent more than just a brand promise. Relatable value propositions will always be critical, but Black consumers have come to expect that brands support the causes they care about. And when brands don’t measure up, the Black community—especially in Nigeria, the U.K. and Brazil—isn’t afraid to walk away from them.

At its core, media is a means of connecting. The stronger the connection, the greater the engagement. Through that lens, no audience places a higher level of importance on media than Black audiences do. To maintain the engagement of this media-hungry audience, inclusion should be at the forefront of each production’s and brand campaign’s growth and development strategy in this next era of media. In an increasingly fragmenting media world, discerning audiences will be quick to move on when they land on something they don’t like.

For additional insights, download our latest Black Diverse Intelligence Series report: The global Black audience: Shaping the future of media.

Notes

¹Nielsen’s 2023 Black Diaspora Study powered by Toluna

²Nielsen National TV Panel; Q2 2023

The post Black audiences are looking for relevant representation in advertising and content appeared first on Nielsen.

Case study

Reaching voters with radio 

In a crowded market for political ads, radio offers an advantage

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Case study

Reaching voters with radio 

In a crowded market for political ads, radio offers an advantage

Contact us

Introduction

Understand the reach of radio with U.S. voters

During election years in the U.S., political campaigns invest significant dollars in advertising across media platforms. To better understand how radio can help campaigns reach more voters, three leading audio-first media companies, iHeart, Audacy and Cumulus, commissioned a study on optimizing multimedia campaigns. As part of the study, we looked at the competitive 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr. Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman.

Objective

Identify incremental reach opportunities

Despite heavy spending on TV in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the Fetterman campaign relied on 13 weeks of radio to supplement the video message ahead of winning the race. By studying this campaign, we sought to understand how radio can help candidates reach more voters in a fragmented media landscape.

Challenge

Reach more of the voting public in the face of media fragmentation

John Fetterman’s 2022 senate campaign wanted to reach more voters without increasing its media budget. While linear TV ads have long been a cornerstone for political campaigns—and continue to be important—audience reach has splintered as more channels have emerged, and the Fetterman campaign needed to know where voters were.

Solution

Use Nielsen Media Impact data to reveal the most effective media mix

By using Nielsen Media Impact, we were able to predict how the campaign team could best reach their target voters based on different budget allocation scenarios. The Fetterman campaign was able to fill a 12% gap of voters they could no longer reach through linear TV by shifting 20% of their political spend to AM/FM radio.

Key findings

Key findings

12%

Radio increased reach without impacting budget

By allocating one-fifth of the ad budget to AM/FM radio, the campaign was able to deliver a 12% bump in audience reach without increasing spend.

29%

Radio delivers the most incremental reach for light TV viewers

Radio added 29% more incremental reach among TV viewers who watch less than two hours a day–more than connected TV (CTV)¹ or social.

23%

Radio reaches more unaffiliated viewers

Adding radio to the campaign media mix resulted in a 23% lift in reaching “swing voters.”²

Notes:
¹CTV refers to any television that is connected to the internet. The most common use of the internet connection is to stream video content.
²Swing voters refers to voters who have not voted consistently with one party in the past or they were still making up their minds ahead of the November election.

Results

Diversifying political ad spend with radio paid off

Based on Nielsen’s Local Media Impact data, the 2022 John Fetterman campaign saw a 10% lift from radio above the local TV campaign, which amounted to 676,000 additional voters secured at no additional cost. Fetterman won the election by less than 300,000 votes—underscoring the importance of fully optimizing your media mix.

Conclusion

Radio is an effective channel for scaling reach

To reach your audience, you first have to know where they are. By merging voting behavior and viewership data, Nielsen was able to determine that radio is an impactful and cost-effective addition to the marketing mixes of political campaigns. Explore more insights into how radio performs for political campaigns.

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Want to talk with our team of experts?

Contact us

Want to talk with our team of experts?

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The post Reaching voters with radio  appeared first on Nielsen.