Nielsen Debuts Tool To Track Streaming Service Viewership Levels

Nielsen NLSN has introduced a new tool designed to track audience levels for streaming service programming as well as television audience viewership rates.

What Happened: The company, whose Nielsen ratings are the entertainment industry standard in measuring the popularity of television shows, has rolled out The Gauge, a new monthly measurement metric showing the total usage of television for broadcast, streaming, cable and other screening options including gaming, video on demand and DVD or Blu-ray viewing.

The Gauge will also include a streaming channel drill down to identify which services are the most popular. Previously, streaming services offered their own data on viewership rates, but these numbers are not subject to independent audits and cannot be confirmed.

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Why It's Important: The initial report from The Gauge covering U.S. television usage in May determined that streaming levels might not be as prominent as believed: last month, streaming usage across all television homes reached 26%, its’ highest level to date but far below the 64% spent by American viewers watching network and cable television.

Among the streaming services, The Gauge determined that Netflix NFLX and Alphabet’s GOOGL YouTube platform captured the most attention among total viewers with 6% each, followed at 3% by Hulu, which is co-owned by Walt Disney Co DIS and Comcast Corporation CMCSA, 2% for Amazon’s AMZN Prime Video and 1% for Disney+.

“The past year has categorically shifted the television viewing landscape,” said Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president for product strategy at Nielsen. “Even as people begin to dive back into their pre-pandemic activities, based on the changes many made to enable streaming coupled with the variety of newly introduced services, we expect people to keep sampling and exploring their options.

“Maybe just as importantly,” Fuhrer added, “as production ramps back up, new content will enter the space, driving additional traction.”