Nielsen gains access to DISH audience data

Monday, April 4th, 2016
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Nielsen Secures Long-Term Agreement For DISH Set-Top-Box Data

  • DISH Providing First National and Local Set-Top-Box Data to Nielsen
  • Data will Enrich Nielsen Television and Total Audience Services

NEW YORK and ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Today, Nielsen and DISH Network L.L.C. announced a multi-year agreement to enrich Nielsen’s industry-leading national and local TV ratings service by integrating DISH’s aggregated set-top-box data. Consistent with Nielsen’s Total Audience strategy, this is the first nationwide dataset to be calibrated with Nielsen’s gold standard, high quality panel to provide the highest levels of granularity and demographic descriptiveness.

Anonymized data from millions of DISH households will be combined with true, person-level insights from Nielsen’s local markets, offering the industry a deeper understanding of viewing habits and increased metrics reliability.

“We are aggressively investing and enhancing our local and national TV measurement business by offering clients an innovative suite of solutions that provide higher quality insights and specificity. DISH’s set-top-box data is the first nationwide dataset to be integrated with our panel data, reaching the perfect balance of deep viewing characteristics and the granularity of large datasets,” said Steve Hasker, chief operating officer, Nielsen. “As the global leader in audience measurement, this is another step in our efforts to integrate big data into our portfolio and our Total Audience efforts.”

Initially, the data provided by DISH will be integrated into Nielsen’s Local TV measurement service across all 210 designated market areas. The agreement will also enable Nielsen to leverage DISH’s set-top-box data to complement many of its local and national products including Nielsen Scarborough, Nielsen Data Fusion, Nielsen Media Custom Insights, and multiple national insight services. Additionally, Nielsen will also have the ability to use set-top-box data for its suite of marketing effectiveness and return on ad sales solutions, including CPG, Retail, and Auto.

“Nielsen is the industry’s currency and adding aggregated DISH set-top-box viewership data to Nielsen’s products will enhance the granularity and clarity of the insights that Nielsen provides,” said Warren Schlichting, DISH executive vice president of Marketing, Programming and Media Sales. “This will allow advertisers and networks to improve their marketing and programming decisions even as television viewing itself becomes more fragmented.”