Dolby OptiView is now Nielsen certified, ensuring that audience measurement across OptiView streaming experiences meets Nielsen’s trusted industry standards. With this certification, Dolby OptiView customers have access to an integration that unlocks advanced audience analytics.
Nielsen TV audience measurement provides independent verification of viewing and ad exposure, giving brand partners confidence that audiences are measured accurately for live content.
In this article, we’ll explore what Nielsen audience tracking is, why it’s beneficial to rights holders and publishers, and how it works with Dolby OptiView.
What is Nielsen audience tracking?
Nielsen is an industry-standard audience measurement system that tracks real-time viewership data across media platforms. This integration is available only to companies that undergo a rigorous application process.
By embedding Nielsen markers in your audio stream, you can measure and report on your live audience in real time, providing actionable insights into viewer engagement and reach.
Nielsen audience measurement ensures accurate, standards-based reporting from:
- Dolby OptiView extracts Nielsen audio watermarks from the ingested streams in real time
- The watermarks are encoded as ID3 markers
- Those markers are delivered to player SDKs via EMSG boxes across all platforms
This allows OptiView customers to capture credited audiences beyond live playback, improving measurement fidelity, advertiser confidence, and monetization, which satisfy contractual obligations.
This certification is fairly difficult to achieve, so not many companies are awarded a Nielsen affiliation. Dolby OptiView has undergone a rigorous review process to ensure the legitimacy and authenticity of its reporting.
What this means for publishers
Enabling Nielsen audience tracking comes with several advantages for publishers. It creates a quality gate for more accurate reporting, builds trust with advertisers, and enables better business decision-making.
False or inaccurate audience tracking in live streaming is a well-known industry challenge, especially as measurement spans devices, platforms, and real-time delivery systems. Nielsen audience tracking helps overcome this.
With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at these benefits.
Creates a quality gate for accurate viewer reporting
The Nielsen integration is limited to a small number of providers because only companies on Nielsen’s certified list are allowed to integrate. Certification is strict to ensure Nielsen can trust that reported viewer numbers are accurate and consistent, protecting the credibility of their measurement.
The certification acts as a quality gate, preventing inflated or incorrect audience reporting. This is very useful for avoiding scenarios in which viewership could be overstated by a large margin to appeal to sponsors, advertisers, and other brand partners.
Builds trust with brand partners
Since data is collected with greater precision and reported in accordance with OptiView’s Nielsen integration, brand partners such as sponsors, advertisers, and so forth can rest assured that the viewership numbers are not skewed to favor the publisher.
Combined with capabilities such as premium live-streaming quality, geo‑protection, tokenization, dynamic ad insertion, and multi‑CDN delivery, Dolby OptiView brings performance, quality, and measurement together in a single premium streaming platform. This creates compliance with contractual reporting requirements.
Enables more strategic content planning
With access to more precise streaming analytics, publishers get a better picture of their business performance. This insight makes it easier to make informed business decisions.
When you have a better idea of which types of content are performing, it’s easier to shape your content strategy moving forward. With access to this information, you can lean into content your audience responds well to rather than guessing what they might like.
How Nielsen audience tracking works with Dolby OptiView
The Nielsen audience tracking integration was designed to work with OptiView’s Streaming product. With that in mind, here’s how Nielsen audience tracking works with our solution:
- Dolby OptiView pulls the Nielsen PCM data from the ingested audio streams
- The data from the ingested streams is converted to ID3
- The converted data is sent to the player using EMSG
The Nielsen integration must be enabled on your account by a Dolby administrator. You can contact your account manager to get it set up on your streaming workflow.
Final thoughts
Now that Dolby OptiView is Nielsen certified, customers can leverage the advanced analytics integration to ensure precision in their streaming reporting. This powerful integration is valuable for strengthening relationships with advertising partners, improving business performance, and more.
Ready to tap into more accurate analytics to improve your streaming workflows? Contact us today, and a member of our team will be in touch.
