Nielsen's Gauge Continues to Measure Something, Though Exactly What Remains a Matter of Some Debate

The television measurement business has always been a bit like weather forecasting: everyone complains about the methodology, but we all still check the numbers before leaving the house.

Nielsen, the venerable ratings company that has been counting eyeballs since the era of rabbit-ear antennas, released its latest Gauge report for the second quarter, showing streaming services commanding a 48.2 percent share of total viewing time among persons two years of age and older. Broadcast television accounted for 26.6 percent, with cable trailing slightly at 25.2 percent.

These figures arrive, however, with a rather substantial asterisk attached. Nielsen has announced that all of its viewing data will be recalculated this fall to incorporate new universe estimates from the Advertising Research Foundation's DASH study — a change the company acknowledges "will have different results than production data." (One imagines media buyers reaching for the aspirin.)

The Gauge, which Nielsen introduced several years ago as a monthly snapshot of the streaming-versus-linear landscape, has always been something of a blunt instrument. It does not, for instance, distinguish between Netflix subscribers watching with advertisements and those paying a premium to avoid them. It offers no demographic breakdowns of the sort that media buyers have demanded since the days when "Must See TV" was a programming strategy rather than a nostalgic punchline. And because it measures total persons two and up, some analysts believe it skews toward younger, more streaming-inclined households.

Nielsen is careful to note that the Gauge is not intended as "currency" — the industry term for measurements that actually determine how advertising dollars change hands. It is, rather, a benchmark, a way of tracking broad shifts in viewing behavior over time.

Those shifts, according to the latest data, show streaming's share actually declining from the previous year, when it stood at 45.3 percent. Total linear television fell to 51.8 percent from 54.7 percent, despite the NBA playoffs and the FIFA World Cup doing their best to prop up the old guard.

What the recalculated numbers will reveal come autumn remains, for now, a matter of informed speculation.

Original story published in MediaPost: "Nielsen's Gauge: Beyond DASH, What Are We Missing?"