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Fairfax Media pulls out of Nielsen’s digital content ratings

Fairfax Media’s Metro Division is no longer tagging its platforms for Nielsen’s daily digital audience measurement solution, Digital Content Ratings (DCR).

The metric, which was originally announced in 2014 after Nielsen won the IAB’s online measurement contract, gives publishers, agencies and brands daily digital audience data across video, audio and text for the first time. It can be measured across computer and mobile devices.

Fairfax Media’s metro division will no longer use Nielsen tags or participate in Digital Content Ratings

It has been available in market since July last year.

In order for Nielsen to measure these digital audiences, publishers are required to opt in by tagging content with Nielsen Software Development Kits (SDKs) to gather their digital activity.

The measurement system also accounts for some off-platform audiences, including Facebook Instant Articles. However, Nielsen is yet to officially launch Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) measurement capabilities to the wider market. Mumbrella understands Nielsen had been experimenting on this measurement with Fairfax Media.

Fairfax Media’s withdrawal from DCR tags, means this cross-platform data will not be recorded for Fairfax Media’s metro titles. Currently, Nielsen has more than 600 sites which actively take part in DCR.

A statement from Nielsen confirmed the news.

“Fairfax Metropolitan division is not currently tagging for Nielsen’s independent digital audience measurement solution, Digital Content Ratings. Nielsen will continue to report Fairfax Metro properties in the industry’s Digital Ratings (Monthly) data,” a Nielsen spokesperson said.

Mumbrella understands digital ratings monthly will be calculated from panel-based data, not tagging. Mumbrella also understands the decision to withdraw from Nielsen was to do with disagreements over methodology.

A Fairfax Media spokesperson told Mumbrella: “Fairfax’s digital innovation is far outpacing standard audience measurement metrics. Our leading-edge digital publishing platforms now provide us direct and instant audience insights for our metropolitan mastheads.

“We will use our rich data – and have it independently audited – to provide advertisers with a complete picture of our high-quality, highly-engaged digital audiences. Accordingly, Fairfax’s metro business has decided not to continue its commercial relationship with Nielsen.”

The withdrawal will not affect EMMA audience data.

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