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Nielsen is adding advanced audience options and outcomes measurements such as return on investment to its next-generation Nielsen One cross-platform audience measurement, the company announced.

Nielsen One Alpha, an early version that the company has given to media agencies to try this year, is expected to launch fully by the end of 2022 with an eye toward availability as deal currency by 2024. It’s the next-generation measurement tool Nielsen hopes will replace its dominant panel-based TV ratings and Digital Ad Ratings.

Nielsen One Alpha’s early measurement output got a rocky reception from the Video Advertising Bureau, an industry trade group, in March, when the company made its measurement available during the current upfront negotiations as a potential alternative to Nielsen’s own panel-based ratings. The VAB cited unexplained discrepancies between Nielsen One and Nielsen panel-based TV audience measurement.

But Nielsen is forging ahead with the new outcomes options for One Alpha and will be offering demonstrations of the new system’s capabilities at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next week.

The new features “will help deliver a single view of the audience who saw a campaign, along with the outcomes of that campaign, which includes sales and other actions a consumer may have taken,” Nielsen announced in a statement. For example, an automotive advertiser targeting competitive brand purchasers could see reach and frequency of a campaign against that segment and how effective the campaign was at delivering outcomes.

The advanced audience capability will integrate Polk automotive audience segments from S&P Global Mobility, followed by additional groups, including marketers’ own custom segments based on their first-party data, Nielsen’s statement said. The first iteration of Nielsen One’s outcomes capabilities “reflect attribution metrics for consumer packaged goods, soon to be followed by automotive campaigns,” Nielsen stated.

Other competitors in TV and digital audience measurement, including Comscore, TVSquared and 605, previously incorporated CPG and/or Polk data for targeting and measuring the impact of advertising.

“We continue to make tremendous progress to bring cross-platform metrics to market by the end of this year,” said Nielsen Chief Operating Officer Karthik Rao in a statement. “We continue to innovate our solution to add more features while bringing in additional metrics that matter most to marketers. By previewing advanced audiences and outcomes measurement alongside reach and frequency metrics, we are helping marketers with a next generation solution where they will be able to better understand the value of the investments they are making, the targeted audiences they're reaching and the actions being taken in a single view.” 

The advanced audience and outcomes features will remain in alpha form upon their introduction into Nielsen One’s user interface next year, according to Nielsen’s statement.

Whether Nielsen will seek accreditation from the industry’s self-regulatory body, the Media Rating Council, for its outcomes measures remains to be seen. Nielsen declined to comment last week on whether it will seek accreditation under the MRC’s new outcomes standard, a draft version of which was released last week.

Nielsen is currently seeking to restore MRC accreditation for its national and local TV ratings and Digital Ad Ratings products, which were suspended last year. Rivals Comscore and iSpot.tv have sought MRC accreditation for all or parts of their TV measurement offerings, while VideoAmp executives have said they intend to seek MRC accreditation, and Innovid has indicated it will seek accreditation for TV outcomes measurement in addition to its existing accreditation for served ad impressions.

WPP’s GroupM last week issued a roadmap for TV measurement currencies that included requiring firms it works with to have or seek MRC accreditation. Other major agency groups, networks and advertisers likewise have called on measurement firms to be accredited.

Jack Neff, editor at large, covers household and personal-care marketers, Walmart and market research. He's based near Cincinnati and has previously written for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Bloomberg, and trade publications covering the food, woodworking and graphic design industries and worked in corporate communications for the E.W. Scripps Co.