YouTube and Nielsen expand their partnership to add co-viewing metrics

YouTube and Nielsen have reinforced their partnership to add co-viewing metrics to account for multiple viewers watching YouTube TV and YouTube on connected TV (CTV). In other words, YouTube will now provide more direct comparisons between an ad reached via traditional TV campaigns and YouTube CTV, independently verified by Nielsen’s measurement process.

“We really feel a responsibility to bring the best of digital capabilities to connected TVs to address the pain points that we are hearing from advertisers. We are trying to help them get to an apples to apples comparison when it comes to planning and measuring YouTube content alongside TV content so that they can make better investment decisions,”  Debbie Weinstein, VP of YouTube and Video Global Solutions at Google, told Adweek.

The additional metric furthers the partnership between the measurement company and YouTube, who first teamed up in 2020. Back then, Nielsen announced that YouTube’s streaming TV inventory was going to be measured in Digital Ad Ratings and Total Ad Ratings to help media buyers and sellers better understand and verify audiences on both the YouTube and YouTube TV apps on CTV.

“Because we are actually able to now break out the dynamic of users watching CTV devices relative to mobile and desktop, we are able to use that data a lot of different ways. The ultimate thing customers want to understand is the relative impact of different media on their results and the outcomes from their campaigns, and that is where these media mix models and marketing mix models really come is as essential, and for the first time, customers will be able to see a breakdown of their CTV results in their MMM model,”  Weinstein added.

According to Nielsen, YouTube reached over 135 million people on connected TVs in the United States in December 2021, and over 35% of YouTube CTV viewers ages 18 and up cannot be reached by any other ad-supported streaming service. Further details about this partnership will be revealed during YouTube’s upfront conversations in May.