A 22-page VAB PowerPoint presentation that seeks to place a spotlight on the “billions of lost TV impressions” it believes are linked to a Nielsen undercount of television audiences between September 2020 and December 2021 has come under scrutiny by the Media Rating Council.
As the MRC sees it, the VAB’s characterization of the group’s analysis of Nielsen’s undercounting of linear television consumption isn’t a correct representation of the facts. On January 26, it distributed a statement saying it would “like to correct a representation that was made concerning MRC in a report issued today by the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) titled ‘Behind Billions of Lost TV Impressions.’”
On January 31, the MRC was moved to offer the industry an “amended” statement.
“The amendment looks to clarify that in its initial statement on the subject the MRC was commenting solely on the topic of COVID-related impacts to Nielsen in-home measurement panels and not on the recently disclosed error concerning OOH viewing,” a spokesperson says.
That important clarification — that the out-of-home viewing error isn’t involved in the MRC’s comments — is the key update.
Otherwise, the watchdog organization is sticking word-for-word with its initial statement, in which it seeks “to correct a representation that was made concerning MRC” in the “Lost TV Impressions” report.
The VAB report made several references to “adjustment factors” that were attributed to MRC, resulting from an analysis MRC conducted last year that concluded certain understatements to Nielsen’s ratings had occurred.
“In fact, MRC did not position these figures as ‘adjustment factors,’ nor did MRC recommend they be used in that manner; rather the figures MRC published in May 2021 were presented simply as estimates of ratings understatements that MRC believed occurred in the single month of February 2021,” the MRC said once again in the new statement, adding that February 2021 was chosen as the subject of the analysis at the time because MRC believed it represented the period at which the potential COVID-related impacts to Nielsen’s panels were at their peak.”
“Adjustment factors” were noted eight times across the VAB report, which concludes based on its analysis that between $468 million and $2.3 billion in ad spend — a tremendous spread — was impacted by the Nielsen undercount.
This, VAB claims, translates to between 17 billion and 86 billion ad impressions in the key Persons 18-49 demographic.
