DIGITAL PLAYBOOK
Australia’s independent digital audience measurement solution
DIGITAL LANDSCAPE REPORT
Digital Content Ratings vs Nielsen Digital Panel
Digital Content Ratings uses a census and panel methodology and Nielsen Digital Panel uses a panel methodology.
Digital Content Ratings leverages Nielsen’s Software Development Kit (SDK) or tag to light up all the publisher content that needs to be measured. This SDK acts as a beacon to our third party data provider to determine who did the viewing, in age and gender terms. While the sample coverage from our third party data provider is at scale, we still weight and balance using our media quality panels to remove any bias or attribution error. This methodology means we are now measuring more audience directly, with less reliance on panel weighting and projection for unknown audience.
Nielsen Digital Panel leverages a panel-based methodology that relies on sample weighting to report audiences.
Improving on the coverage of Nielsen Digital Panel, Digital Content Ratings includes the measurement of:
- People under 18 on mobile devices
- Off-platform and in-app consumption
- Mobile video
As a result of expanding our measurement across these three key areas, the new Digital Content Ratings coverage better reflects publishers’ total digital audiences.
Digital Content Ratings, through the SDK, has the technical capability to measure content consumed via secure websites (HTTPS) and Single Page Application type website technologies.
Digital Content Ratings’ more robust identification of content viewed in foreground vs background enables more complete unique audience and duration crediting.

Digital Data
READ THE LATEST NEWS HERE
- Monthly tagged news rankings can be found in press releases here*
- Digital Measurement Upgrade: Nielsen Expands Mobile Coverage, Adds Off-Platform Measurement
- Historic Milestone For Australian Media Industry: Daily Digital Content Ratings Switched On
*Note: Monthly Digital Content Ratings Tagged press releases are published on the 11th of every month at 10:00am. In the event that the 11th is on a weekend or public holiday, publication will fall to the next business day.
DIGITAL NEWSLETTER
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IAB Australia Endorsed

On behalf of the media and advertising industry, IAB Australia invests significant time and resources to manage a sole and preferred supplier deed for digital audience measurement.
IAB initially developed the digital audience measurement blueprint in 2007 in association with AANA and MFA. This was the precursor to the development and tender for the first preferred digital audience measurement supplier in 2010 and the launch of IAB’s digital audience measurement system which took place in 2011. Nielsen was reappointed as the preferred supplier on January 1st 2015 for a three year period, with a two year extension option. Digital Ratings (Monthly), which was launched in early 2016 is the second of three planned major upgrades to the digital audience measurement system. The third upgrade will be the launch of Digital Content Ratings which will leverage the scale of third-party providers and will be available in mid 2017.