Nielsen and IAB stalemate sees clients take to Twitter to share digital rankings
An ongoing stalemate between Nielsen and IAB Australia has seen the Digital Content Ratings provided by the former shrouded in secrecy since the start of the year. However, despite requests for the data to be confidential, some individuals have taken matters into their own hands.
A Guardian Australian employee has shared the Digital Content Ratings for the top 20 Australian digital publishers, as measured by Nielsen, despite the organisation advising IAB that the ranking would be seen only to clients until the IAB supports the data collated by Nielsen.
According to the rankings shared on Twitter, The Guardian Australia was ranked seventh for January 2021, with a unique audience of 6.878 million, behind SMH.com.au and Daily Mail Australia. However, by June, Guardian Australia overtook SMH.com.au and Daily Mail Australia for the first time to jump to fifth spot.
Source: Twitter
According to additional posts on Twitter, in March, News.com.au overtook ABC news websites to be the top ranked outlet in the country, however, that peak was short lived, and ABC soon returned to the top spot where it has remained in April, May and June, which saw it achieve an audience of 12.839 million.
ABC news websites led the pack in Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings throughout 2020 and ended the year with a unique audience of 11.4 million for the month of December.
The IAB Australia’s Board, Executive and Measurement Council, which represents 15 media and agency organisations, is working with Nielsen to approve the new methodology for the collation of the digital ranking data. It is understood that Nielsen is “working closely” with the IAB but that no time frame for the data to be made public has been set.
In the meantime, publishers that receive the data have been reminded that a condition of receiving the data is that it is not made publicly available.
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Olivia Kruimel is the managing editor at Mumbrella. She has more than 15 years of experience in journalism, communications and marketing. Her journalism career began at Fairfax Media (now part of Nine) and includes various B2B publications such as B&T, Travel Today and ALB. As a marketer Olivia has worked for Standard Chartered and various global law firms.
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