Nielsen Confirms Undercount of Pandemic TV Viewership Following Standoff With Networks

Measurement firm says television metrics were off by up to 6% in February

The organization tasked with checking Nielsen’s homework is crying foul about the measurement firm’s counts of television usage throughout the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. And after a month-long face-off with TV networks over this issue, Nielsen has confirmed that its figures do, in fact, need adjustment.

The Media Rating Council, a nonprofit organization that audits Nielsen ratings, says that Nielsen’s Total Usage of Television time (or TUT) from February was lowballed by between 2% and 6% among viewers in the adults 18-49 demo most coveted by advertisers, and that people using the TV among that same demo (known as Persons Using Television, or PUT) were understated by between 1-5% in the same month—undercounts that could translate to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost advertising spend.

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