Why Nielsen Is Now Measuring Amazon and What That Means for New Streaming Services

Like all of us employed by the industry in the “Peak TV” era, Nielsen is working harder than ever. On Monday, the ratings currency company announced that it is now measuring viewership for Amazon Prime Video shows and unveiled the viewership numbers it crunched for new series “The Boys.” The Amazon addition comes two years after Nielsen first said it was doing the same tabulations for Netflix shows, news that wasn’t well-received by the streaming behemoth, a company that was famously even more secretive about its viewership data back then. What’s the beef? Both streaming services believe Nielsen numbers severely underrate their shows. After all, Nielsen is only measuring television sets, so mobile, computer and tablet viewing all aren’t counted. That’s true for any platform Nielsen measures, but Amazon, for one, believes the strategy disproportionately punishes the modern way many subscribers choose to consume its programming. Also, both Amazon and Netflix are international companies, and Nielsen only measure U.S. audiences. It’s a piece of a pie, but not a piece of cake to reconcile with a platform’s own findings. As a result, Nielsen also doesn’t report nearly the same ratings as Netflix does, and their methodologies for measuring a “view”...

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