Nielsen's David Kenny on the changing phase of audience measurement

In an interview with India Today’s news director Rahul Kanwal, Nielson CEO David Kenny spoke about the changing trends in the world of audience measurement. Kenny also shed light on the fast-paced media business as well as what inclusion of AI tools would do to the sector.
The interview started with David speaking about the big trends that are being watched out for in audience measurement.
“What we are doing is moving away from measuring devices, measuring TV screens, measuring phone screens. It is all the same. So, we are moving away from machine-based measurement to people-based measurement, which means we are really respecting and measuring time. Where does a consumer spend her whole day and how much of it is on which screen, and what exactly is she watching in each moment of time. It is a big change, an exciting one, very respectful of the fact that a consumer is now in charge of his own experience.”
Rahul asks as to how is he hoping to bring all these devices together and link them to the same individual.
Kenny acknowledges says: “We have more data than ever before. Television is connected to the internet, phones connected to networks, the setup boxes from cable companies can give us return path data. So we have many, many data sources that can give us a starting point. There's still a lot of error in data, chances of double counting and reconciliation to the same person is hard. So we use a panel of people we know who agreed to give us their data and we put the two together to get a weighted view of what the audience is actually doing.”
They also discussed about OTT platforms vs content producers and companies in the US.
“I think the producers of content are going to have to understand the audience better than ever before. Because the audience is more heterogeneous. Secondly, you need a better job of being discovered. How you market in the OTT world is to be discovered. This is very different from the way movies were marketed in the past.
This is a great service, not just to the studio but to the consumers as well. Because the consumers are also exhausted. There are so many choices, there is so much content. Organising libraries to provide content consumer love is key.”
Later, he spoke about the companies in the USA as well: “Everyone's data is only their own. So why do Netflix and YouTube use Nielsen? Because they need to know what people are watching when they are not watching them. This is what everyone is figuring out in 2023. We have a lot of growth in OTT. It doesn't go forever. At the end of the day, there are only 7 billion people in the world and only 24 hours in a day. So it is fixed and, therefore, you are competing for a share. When you're competing for share, the more you know about your share and someone else's share, is how you compete to gain share.”