ONLINE
VIDEOCENSUS
GLOSSARY
2013
ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
SAMPLE
RECRUITMENT
RESEARCH SAMPLE
RDD PANEL
VideoCensus uses the same RDD//Online panel as
NetView, with hundreds of thousands of panelists
worldwide, to effectively report on the long tail of
video content and provide detailed demographic
analysis of online video consumption across all
sites. RDD//Online is a proprietary methodology
designed to marry the representativeness of an
RDD panel with the depth provided by an onlinerecruited panel.
Nielsen RDD panels are recruited using the
industry-recommended Random Digital Dial
methodology as well as proven methods to
secure maximum participation from this
randomly selected sample. A random sample
of phone numbers is selected from a base of all
residential phone numbers in the country, and the
recruitment is conducted by telephone. Eligible
panelists that are recruited to participate in the
panel are mailed a membership packet including
the tracking software, installation instructions,
and a toll-free number for technical support.
The RDD ‘core’ of the methodology is relied upon
to provide a baseline for representative demography
and online behavior. This baseline is used to create
demographic and behavioral weights for the onlinerecruited panel. Our patented user prompting
ensures we have the best demographic data to base
our weights upon.
RDD recruitment creates the most representative
sample with highest demographic and behavioral
data accuracy with minimum sample bias.
SAMPLE RECRUITMENT
The RDD//Online panel consists of 2 sub samples,
based on recruitment methodology: RDD and
Online panel.
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
METHODOLOGY
ONLINE-RECRUITED PANEL
Nielsen has partnered with various established,
panel-based market research companies to provide
on-going recruitment of a representative sample of
Internet users into the Online sample. Prospective
panel members are recruited via an e-mail invitation
from partner companies or via online advertising
(banner, sponsored links, etc.). Prospective panelists
are then directed to the Online panel recruitment
website where they are presented with research
program details (including Nielsen’s privacy
policy) and are asked to provide their demographic
profile information. Upon agreement to the privacy
policy and completion of the demographic survey
and, the NetSight meter is downloaded to the
panelist’s computer. Nielsen never bundles its meter
with other software, and requires all panel recruits
to visit our website so that the process is
completely transparent.
Nielsen has an on-going panel management system
to ensure Online panel sample quality. This includes
performing affiliate partners evaluation analysis
to prevent potential recruitment bias; collecting
demo profile information from all panelists
consistently, and contacting with our panelists
in the same method as in RDD, which was done in
the local language of each country. The primary goal
of Online panel recruitment is the establishment of
a representative group of Internet users, controlling
for as many sample-biasing characteristics
as possible.
Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company
WEIGHTING AND
CALIBRATION PROCEDURES
Nielsen uses an iterative proportional fitting (IPF)
technique to weight and calibrate the panel data
prior to reporting. These procedures weight the
panelists to targets derived for both demographic
and behavioral metrics. In addition to demographic
weighting targets based upon universe estimates,
which are calculated through the global
enumeration process, additional demographic and
behavioral weighting targets based on the RDD
panel are incorporated.
THE METER
Right at the heart of the Nielsen user-centric offering
is the patented NetSight desktop meter. Unique
among measurement suppliers, by measuring
online activity at desktop operating system level
we are able to offer the most accurate perspective
on what a PC user is actually doing online, and
offline, not only what their computer is doing on
the internet. That is, whilst most measurement
systems measure what content is being delivered
to a web browser (and over claim consumption),
we are able to tell which window or application
is actually in focus or active and therefore can
be observed. This enables us to make the most
accurate estimates of time spent available.
A subset of metered panelists is prompted
with a login window at the beginning of a
session to identify the person who is using the
PC. All household members are listed in the
login window, so that it is easy to select. This
information is then used to individualize data for
non-prompted panelists.
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
METHODOLOGY
THE METER ( continued )
For these panelists, activity measurement and data
retrieval have been designed to be as unobtrusive
as possible. The meter tracks separate individuals
using the PC by initiating a prompt at the start of
the session, requiring user identification. If the
machine is inactive for a period of 30 minutes,
the user prompt will reappear. This is similar to
the multiple-login feature when starting up a PC
running Microsoft Windows. The data is reported
for each individual. This is the only intervention
required from the panel member’s perspective.
All data is securely and unobtrusively transmitted
to Nielsen in real time, while the panel member
browses the Internet. Panel members are not
required to record their internet activity or to save
or transfer data to Nielsen.
SESSION RULE CREDITING
Nielsen currently defines session rules with an
identified start and end time, as defined by specific
computer activity (opening and closing of a
browser) and/ or a defined period of user inactivity
within a browser. VideoCensus has changed its
current session crediting rule so that the “end time”
identified for browser inactivity is extended to four
hours, rather than 30 minutes. With the change in
session rules, VideoCensus will continue to report
new streams up to 4 hours after computer inactivity;
all new streams that fire after 4 hours of inactivity
will be excluded from reporting.
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VISIT
SYNDICATION AND
DISTRIBUTED CONTENT
To report the complete stream volume of an
online video publisher, VideoCensus includes
streams that originate on a site but are embedded
or delivered through a syndicated player on
another site. This is achieved by measuring
the video player and stream URL, not the page
URL, when determining where a stream is
to be credited. Syndicated content is measured
in this way whether or not a site has deployed
VideoCensus tags. Consider the following
examples for illustration:
• A YouTube clip that has been embedded
on Facebook is credited to YouTube. The
VideoCensus system observes the URL of the
video played and clearly determines the URL
to originate from a YouTube source, even if
consumed on a Facebook page.
•
A Hulu clip that has been tagged with
VideoCensus tags is played on MSN. Hulu
receives the credit for this clip as the beacon
(tag call to a Nielsen server) sends the Hulu
Client ID each time this clip is played.
NOTE – Content that is delivered as an asset to a
distribution partner and served via that distribution
partner’s server and player infrastructure would
not be included in the originating site’s stream
counts or audience projections (as in this
case there is no stream URL or tag URL within
the originating site’s control to be leveraged
for crediting).
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
TIME SPENT VIEWING (TSV)
METRIC
FULL EPISODE CONTENT
MEASUREMENT
Time Spent Viewing (TSV) measurement is derived
from the panel for both actively- and passivelymeasured streams. At an instance level, each stream
is assigned a duration in seconds. Note that there is
no minimum duration requirement.
Full episode TV shows are measured as a collection
of segments and not as a combined episode. Each
stream within an episode is measured discretely.
For example, a 42 minute episode broken up into
5 segments (each preceded by an advertisement),
measures 10 separate streams (5 ads, and
5 content segments) and credits the 5 content
streams to the appropriate entity (the ad streams
are currently excluded from VideoCensus).
The meter installed on the panelist’s computer
sees a tag fire (for tagged entities) or a stream URL
loaded (for passive entities) and starts counting
duration until a stop event is recorded. Examples of
stop events include:
•
Another stream URL is initiated
•
The user uses the transport controls to pause
or stop the clip
•
The audio accompanying the video clip ends
Duration is capped at 4 hours. This allows for all
reasonable expectations of long viewing activity
on a single stream, such as a live sporting event,
where the length of programming may extend to
3 or 4 hours. All streams longer than this 4 hour
threshold are excluded from TSV calculations.
Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company
Both active and passive methodologies credit
full episode viewing in this way. With passive
measurement, the meter on the panelist’s
computer observes multiple unique streams
(one per segment) even if the stream protocol
utilizes a single stream URL to deliver all segments.
In order to ensure tagged clients’ full episodes
are measured in the same manner, tagged clients
send a start beacon for each individual video
segment. This ensures consistency between
the Passive and Active (tagged/census)
measurement methodologies.
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
METHODOLOGY
HYBRID MEASUREMENT
USER ACTIONS
HYBRID METHODOLOGY
Given the interactivity and advanced functionality
provided by online video players, it is difficult to
measure user actions consistently across websites,
players, and protocols. For this reason, we have
standardized on the following rules for user actions
that occur:
Hybrid methodology uses both panel and census
data to inform online audience projections.
A STREAM IS COUNTED
•
For each “chapter” segment (full episodes),
the first time it is accessed, regardless of
whether an ad plays in between the chapters.
•
For each single clip viewed. If replayed from
cache, an additional stream is only counted
for census-enabled (tagged) sites.
•
If an ad interrupts the video experience
(including ads in between chapters)
a new stream is counted when the
content resumes
NO ADDITIONAL STREAMS ARE COUNTED
IN THE EVENT OF:
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•
Scrubbing (fast forward or rewind) to
a previously accessed chapter without
ad interruption
•
Scrubbing back to the beginning of
the stream without ad interruption
•
Pausing and then resuming the video
VISIT
The panel is used to understand the demography
and behavioral profiles of actual people under
measurement while the tag data is used to
understand the gaps in panel coverage and
create an activity profile of people who are not
under measurement and provide a target for
stream views.
VideoCensus’ new Total panel type includes activity
outside of home and work locations accounting
for previously unmeasured audience from mobile
devices, secondary PCs and access points outside
of home and work.
CREATING A
PERSON-CENTRIC
HYBRID APPROACH
The tag can capture the most accurate count of
stream views if implemented completely across a
publisher’s site portfolio and generally a gap will
often be seen when comparing tag stream views to
panel-projected stream views.
The larger the gap, the more likely that there is
additional stream activity unaccounted for by the
current panel projections. VideoCensus leverages
the highly-accurate tag data to inform and calibrate
Nielsen’s panel projections of volume metrics (i.e.,
stream views and time spent viewing); however,
no adjustment is made to the unique viewer
calculation as Nielsen’s audience projections
already project to a total active internet universe.
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
EXAMPLE
Step 1: Panelist views video on a publisher’s site
(i.e. ccnnn.com)
Step 2: Two URLs fire on panelist’s machine
and are logged by the NetSight meter for the video
view instance:
• Stream URL: rtmp://ht.cdn.tunner.com/cnb/
big/us/2011/07/08/bts.ranger.fan.falls.dies.
wfaa_640x360_dl.flv
• Nielsen Video Tag URL:
• http://secure-us.imrworldwide.com/cgi-bin/
m?ci=us-120340&c6=vc,c01&cc=1&tl=dab0tech/2011/07/17/bts.ranger.fan.falls.
dies&rnd=4685686123456789
Step 3: Nielsen collection servers also log instance
of the tag URL firing for panelist and for every other
viewer of the video. The data is aggregated at end of
month to produce a census count of video activity
for the site.
Step 4: Nielsen Loader collects all logs
from panelists’ meters, parses stream URLs, and
credits stream URLs to Nielsen MarketView entities
(see section below for details about Nielsen’s
MarketView system)
• Stream URL: Stream dictionary pattern for
the site is matched to stream URL in Step 2
• Tag URL: ci=us-120340 from tag URL in Step 2
is matched to site parent entity, and c6=vc,c01
is matched to ccnnn.com channel entity
Step 5: Unweighted run aggregates all credited
NETWORK (stream URLs) and TAGGED (tag URLs)
instance data by site for the month into raw counts.
Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company
Step 6: Site is assigned a reportable data source
for displaying in VideoCensus (NETWORK or
TAGGED). Only one data source per site/entity
can be chosen and reported on in VideoCensus
for a given month.
Step 7: Panelist weights are applied at the
raw instance level for reportable data source
(NETWORK or TAGGED) and aggregated to
produce weighted projections for audience,
streams, and duration metrics. For Hybrid Total
audience, a virtual sample is incorporated by
duplicating weighted records from select Home
and Work users whose demographic profile
matches “Other Only” users (as identified per
global enumeration survey).
Step 8: Streams and duration for tagged entities
are scaled to reflect census stream count levels
•
•
•
A scaling factor is calculated at the site level
(includes program/client defined entities)
and applied at the stream URL instance level
The census data from Step 3 is divided by
weighted streams from Step 7 to produce a
scaling factor, e.g., if weighted Total streams
is 47,000,000 and census streams are
62,000,000, then the scaling factor is 1.32
(62,000,000/47,000,000)
The weighted streams and duration in
Step 7 are multiplied by the scaling factor,
e.g., 47MM streams is scaled to 62MM, and
128MM minutes is scaled to 169MM minutes
(128MM x 1.32)
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
TAGGING
PASSIVE MEASUREMENT:
PANEL
ACTIVE/TAGGING
MEASUREMENT: CENSUS
For breadth coverage of the online viewing audience,
and for providing estimates of the overall video
viewing audience, VideoCensus employs a panelbased approach. Doing so enables measurement of
all sites that meet a minimum panelist threshold.
The panel-based methodology does not require
site participation (although collaboration with
Nielsen on stream URL definitions is encouraged).
Each member of the RDD//Online panel has a
software application running on his/her computer
which communicates to Nielsen all of the online
viewing behaviors.
Active measurement, where a site has deployed
VideoCensus tags, complements and enhances
passive measurement. With this model the video
player sends a beacon ping to a Nielsen server
that communicates additional information about
the media being streamed. This cooperative
approach enables granular reporting across each
of a publisher’s MarketView entities (see section
below for details about Nielsen’s MarketView
system), as well as client-defined custom roll-ups.
Each computer session is credited to a specific
panelist, for whom Nielsen has a rich demographic
profile. The stream URLs consumed by each panelist
are credited to the corresponding site on which the
stream was watched based on the stream dictionary
definitions in place within the VideoCensus stream
classification system.
CLICK HERE FOR A GRAPHICAL EXAMPLE OF
PASSIVE AND ACTIVE MEASUREMENT, IN THE
ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS QUICK START GUIDE.
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
MARKETVIEW HIERARCHY
MARKETVIEW LEVELS
VideoCensus uses the MarketView hierarchy, which
is employed across all Nielsen audience
measurement products. MarketView was designed
to provide our clients with additional clarity into
the logical taxonomy of site ownership and better
visibility as to what Internet sites best compete
against each other. The key benefits of the
MarketView hierarchy are:
• Provides buyers of Internet advertising with
better visibility into their purchasing options
by focusing on the available audience within
specific groupings of viewer interest and/or
content segments.
MarketView reports show the relationship or
hierarchy of the organization within a parent
company. There are three levels to MarketView:
•
Provides sellers of Internet advertising
space “apples to apples” comparison of
their content specific opportunity vs.
competitive opportunities for audiences
of similar viewer interest.
•
Provides a reporting standard that allows
clients to better understand Brands and their
Channels as well as their ultimate Parent.
With MarketView, all the URLs contributing to a
Brand or Channel can be aggregated for a complete
view. This results in higher sample sizes and
offers clients:
• More robust drill downs
• More companies will make cut-off
requirements for reporting
• Custom research and analytics can dig deeper
and perform more sophisticated data mining
• A true comparison of content
between competitors
In summary, the MarketView system provides
improved data for competitive intelligence, Internetuser behavior and demographics through a contentbased hierarchy of companies and organizations on
the Internet.
Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company
PARENT LEVEL
The Parent level is the highest level of aggregation
within a single roll-up. This level consists of the
aggregation of two lower levels called the Brand
and Channel levels. Traffic from these lower levels
will contribute the overall traffic number for the
Parent level it resides under.
BRAND LEVEL
The Brand level resides one level underneath the
Parent level. This level consists of the aggregation
of a lower level called the Channel level. Traffic
from these lower levels will contribute the overall
traffic number for the Brand level it resides
under. This overall Brand level traffic, in turn, will
contribute to the total traffic for its Parent. The
Brand level can sometimes be represented as a
subsidiary or operating unit.
CHANNEL LEVEL
The Channel level is the lowest level of the
MarketView hierarchal structure in which
domain(s) and/or URL(s) can be aggregated
under. The Channel level always resides
underneath the Brand level. Traffic from this lower
level will contribute the overall traffic number for
the Brand level it resides under. This overall Brand
level traffic, in turn, will contribute to the total
traffic for its Parent.
A Channel is defined as a destination on the
web where editorial consistency is focused on
a specific view of interest such as news, sports,
and travel. A Channel is the lowest level of
aggregation. Channel content must be logically
consistent with the Brand category classification.
Channels need to be consistent with the look and
feel of the Brand.
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
REPORTING
COMBINING METHODOLOGIES INTO STANDARD METRICS
Regardless of whether sites are tagged, VideoCensus includes all sites on which a minimum panelist
threshold has been reached. The chart below highlights the metrics that vary based on the collection
methodology used for each entity. For a complete listing and definition of all metrics included in
VideoCensus reports, please refer to the Digital Terms Glossary.
METRIC
ACTIVELY
MEASURED ENTITIES
PASSIVELY
MEASURED ENTITIES
Unique
Viewers
Metric
Projected from panel based
on meter observations of the
VideoCensus tags
Projected from panel based
on meter observations of
stream URLs
Projected from panel based on
meter observations of VideoCensus
tags.A scaling factor is applied
to align with server-based count
(census) of collected start events
Projected from panel based
on meter observations of
stream URLs
Total
Streams
Metric
Time Spent
Viewing
Metric
Content
Crediting
Model
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Projected from panel based on meter
observations of VideoCensus tags
combined with meter events
(such as pause, stop) and the
presence of audio. A scaling factor
is applied to align with the census
counts for streams.
Projected from panel
based on meter observations
of stream URLs combined
with meter events (such
as pause, stop) and the
presence of audio.
Streams are credited to the
appropriate MarketView entity
(and custom roll-up) based on
granular crediting information
delivered in the VideoCensus tag.
Streams are credited to the appropriate
MarketView entity based on matches to
stream definitions in the VideoCensus
processing system. These definitions are
continually refined by a team of specialists
and informed by input from publishers.
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ONLINE VIDEOCENSUS: GLOSSARY
EXCLUDED FROM MEASUREMENT
ADVERTISING
Video advertisements are currently excluded from
VideoCensus reports, however, Nielsen does report
on Video Ad Network traffic. Nielsen excludes
advertising streams based on the determination
that ads are streamed from a 3rd party server
(e.g., Atlas or DoubleClick) or from a location on
a publisher’s CDN that is used for serving ads.
Additionally, by viewing ads within the context of the
content they are affiliated with, Nielsen develops
classification rules to effectively exclude advertising
streams while still crediting valid content streams.
This ad exclusion also applies to “house ads” (or
promos); those designed to promote the content of
a specific site or the site itself and are played within
the normal rotation of ad inventory.
ADULT CONTENT
All adult content is currently excluded from
VideoCensus reporting.
Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company
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ABOUT NIELSEN
Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and
measurement company with leading market positions in marketing
and consumer information, television and other media measurement,
online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and related
properties. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries,
with headquarters in New York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands.
For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.
Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company. All rights reserved. Nielsen and
the Nielsen logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CZT/ACN
Trademarks, L.L.C. Other product and service names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.
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