Nine and SBS affected in Nielsen measurement discrepancy

By AdNews | 23 December 2014
 

Nielsen has revealed that Channel Nine and SBS were the TV networks affected when its systems monitoring TV stations sped up.

Earlier this month it was revealed that there were inadequate checks and balances in place to correct a logging error which could have affected the data around nearly a quarter of a million TV ads.

A spokesperson from Nielsen said: “We identified a time stamp issue in our Advertising Information Service (AIS) spot monitoring files. The internal clocks we use to allocate time stamps slowed by a few minutes, on a few machines between 1 January and 27 May, 2014.”

As a result of this, Channel Nine in Melbourne was affected by plus four minutes between the period of 1 January until the 31 March.

The station was affected again with the time stamp shifting to plus five minutes between the period 1 April until 27 May 2014.
Both Channel Nine and SBS in Adelaide were affected with the time stamps for Nine moving forward two and a half minutes faster and the monitoring on SBS moved three and a half minutes faster.

SBS in Perth was the worst affected though, with its time moving eight and a half minutes faster.

A spokespersons from Nielsen said: In consultation with the MFA and AANA we have reviewed the overall campaign impact of the AIS time stamp issue. We must carefully consider the confidentiality of both the agency supporting us and their client data so we cannot provide a full detailed analysis to market.”

“The impact analysis was run independently on a sample of 17 campaigns. The campaigns we analysed had a mixture of activity on affected and non-affected stations, as we wanted to understand the total campaign impact. The impact did vary from campaign to campaign and by demographic and was affected by many factors such as station split, budget, length of campaign and program selection.”

The spokesperson continued: “We certainly take this seriously and have communicated openly in the first instance with the MFA, agency involved and the two Networks involved. The issue is not related to OZ TAM’s TV ratings measurement.

Nielsen said that the issue was corrected within 48 hours of being identified and a new platform has been put in place as well as both automated and human checks which safeguard against similar events occurring in future.

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