“Proud Nielsen Household.” This magnet was stuck to our refrigerator for years, commemorating that fateful week in 1986 when our family was chosen by television ratings juggernaut Nielsen to document the shows that we watched. Ultimately, my mom’s demanding job, plus my school activities and lessons, meant that we returned a blank form. Nonetheless, there was something both fascinating and baffling about being picked to weigh in on America’s favorite pastime. When we were initially contacted, we felt a sense of duty. How would anyone know about viewership habits if we declined to participate? Billions of TV advertising dollars were on the line, and it was up to us to decide how they should be spent.
“For decades, there was no dispute—Nielsen’s measurement was the only game in town,” according to John Koblin of The New York Times (nytimes.com/2025/02/10/business/media/tv-ratings-streaming.html). By recording more than 100,000 people from 42,000 households, broken down by age, income, gender, and race, Nielsen’s panel composition has followed the same model since its inception. However, as technology advanced, its honor system diaries were replaced with equipment installed in homes, watching hundreds of networks. This system hit a snag during the pandemic when Nielsen technicians were unable to service the equipment during lockdowns.
The Media Rating Council (mediaratingcouncil.org), formed in the early 1960s after a U.S. congressional committee held hearings regarding the accuracy of television rating research and reporting, determined that an independent, industry-funded organization should be in charge of reviewing and accrediting these services. As a kind of Better Business Bureau for ratings services, the Media Rating Council withdrew its seal of approval for Nielsen in 2021, deciding that its data had “degraded.” This prompted Nielsen to redesign its reporting systems to include streaming systems and apps, which was particularly problematic given that streaming services were not required to release their viewership data.
In 2023, Nielsen’s National Television Audience Service was reapproved by the Media Rating Council, and in January of 2025, its “Big Data + Panel” measurement was accredited. This measurement combines “hundreds of millions of data points and billions of impressions across screens” from set-top box and smart TV usage with the household panel data (nielsen.com/data-center/big-data-panel). It applies algorithms to correct for bias and outliers, but has used proprietary machine learning and advanced AI for years.
Nielsen is clearly the dominant player. But as television executives call for a single source upon which to rely, upstarts have made forays into the business, since ad spend on media entertainment depends upon the belief that reported ratings are rock-solid and reliable. Determining which ratings source is the gold standard has been problematic as of late. For example, the measurements reported vary across services. Netflix reports “hours viewed” and “views.” Amazon Prime Video and Max disclose “viewers.” The calculations comprising those datapoints are somewhat of a mystery.
In an analysis of viewership of Beast Games, a reality series from Amazon Prime Video, the Entertainment Strategy Guy (ESG) newsletter compared ratings from Nielsen, YouTube, Google Trends, IMDb, and others to determine that it was not in the top 10% of any metric tracked (entertainmentstrategyguy.com/2025/01/28/beast-games-is-mid). In contrast, Amazon stated that the show had more than 50 million viewers in its first 25 days, suggesting it was “a runaway hit,” according to The New York Times.
Was the Nielsen data the most correct? It depends on who you ask. ESG reported Nielsen’s Beast Games viewership to be around 6 million per week, compared with upstart Luminate’s tally of 5 million. VideoAmp’s Peter Liguori stated that VideoAmp data is the most correct, using a proprietary Big Data and AI system to report numbers, although it was not cited by ESG. Regardless of system used, there is a big difference between 5 and 50 million.
For librarians and information professionals who need to use ratings research, one of the most important things to note is that the picture (pun intended) is further complicated by the fact that it is in the best interest of the network or platform to use the reporting service with the highest counts. In the end, the goal is to sell the most advertising, and ratings are the currency of the TV viewership measurement realm.
