IAB Australia and Nielsen have today switched on Digital Content Ratings (DCR), providing publishers, agencies and marketers with daily digital audience data for the first time.

Nielsen Digital Content Ratings provides the Australian media industry with a daily view of how many people consume content across all key digital devices and complements Nielsen’s existing Digital Ratings (Monthly) measurement solution.

Digital Content Ratings combines Nielsen’s digital device panels with census-based measurement to provide media buyers and owners with an independent, granular dataset delivering a daily view of how people engage with text, video and audio content across all key digital devices.

It also complements Nielsen’s existing Digital Ad Ratings measurement solution, ensuring consistency between the measurement of digital content and advertising performance – daily.

Digital Content Ratings is the third of three planned major upgrades to the digital audience measurement system in Australia.  Stage one saw IAB Australia and Nielsen release the market’s first view of Australians’ mobile and tablet audience data, while stage two delivered Digital Ratings (Monthly), giving the Australian market its first view of their total audiences, unduplicated, across key digital devices. This third stage provides daily audience reach data, enables reporting of large and small sites and allows digital publishers to add back their off-platform audiences for a comprehensive daily view of their content reach.

IAB CEO, Vijay Solanki said, “The Australian digital industry – which now accounts for half of all advertising spend – has always been world leading in the area of digital measurement. DCR is a game changer for the industry because it is daily, people-based and independent. It’s good for publishers and gives more precision to advertisers. It also helps create more transparency and more confidence for digital.”

Nicole Sheffield, Chairperson of IAB Australia and CDO, News Corp Australia said, “The daily trading metrics will enable publishers and agencies to pivot and take action during campaigns and respond to daily brief cycles. This brings digital in line with other media reporting daily ratings metrics. Importantly, DCR also measures ‘off-platform’ audiences, meaning for the first time as a publisher, I can attribute audiences consuming content off-platform to my overall unique audience number. No other media measurement system allows marketers to count people consuming content on third-party platforms, and also attribute people back to the content originator.”

Alex Smith, Nielsen’s Head of Digital Product, said “We set out to measure Australians and the way they engage with different content types across different devices. This has been a complex environment to measure but an incredible opportunity to deliver the first and only daily, independent, people-based digital measurement solution. We are delivering daily audience data for both big and small sites, including on and off platform which will see us support the diverse and vibrant publisher portfolio in Australia.”

Monique Perry, Head of Nielsen’s Media Industry Group said, “the roadmap to Digital Content Ratings was set out with the IAB in 2014, it was bold, ambitious and pioneering and while it took a little longer than we had planned, that’s because we have charted new territory, and it was critical to get right.

“Digital measurement is a team sport and Australia is truly a world-class team. The industry in this market is incredibly engaged and constantly scrutinising and challenging our digital audience measurement solution. This collaboration and team play is not found anywhere else, and the number of world firsts for Nielsen delivered out of the Australian market is unmatched and reflected by this industry collaboration and commitment. We have some of the best people in the world sitting here in this market. Every day our product and data science teams are innovating and building new technology solutions to best measure this complex and changing digital system. As a result, we now have a world-leading digital audience measurement solution, which the Australian industry should feel incredibly proud of,” explained Perry.

When asked what’s next for digital measurement, Solanki said “change”. “Digital is a diverse, incredibly complex and constantly changing content ecosystem. Content owners are refining their strategies, people are changing the way they consume digital media and technology is constantly evolving; so digital audience measurement must keep evolving too. And that’s exactly what we will do,” concluded Solanki.