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Nielsen Enhances Identity System for Digital Ad Measurement In 15 Markets To Prepare For A Cookieless Future

3 minute read | December 2021

9 December 2021  – Nielsen  (NYSE: NLSN) today announces the release of its enhanced Nielsen Identity System for Digital Ad Ratings in 15 markets starting on 1st February 2022. This change enables more accurate digital ad measurement, connecting digital impressions to the demographics of people across billions of devices in preparation for a cookieless future. 

To combat the issue of cookie and mobile ad id erosion and in preparation for an increasingly fragmented future, Nielsen previously announced the revolution of digital audience measurement. Nielsen leads the industry by providing holistic people-based measurement across devices, de-duplicating across platforms and publishers.

The Nielsen Identity System serves to unify the identity data that Nielsen receives in an interoperable way across the media ecosystem. Advertisers and publishers can use Nielsen measurement with confidence knowing that when a digital ad is viewed then the measured demographics are appropriately assigned and the audiences are deduplicated across mobile and PC platforms in order to get to true people based metrics. Nielsen achieves this by uniquely combining Nielsen assets with third party data sets calibrated against truth sets.

Following the roll out in the UK, Italy, and France on 1st February, the enhanced Nielsen Identity System for Digital Ad Ratings is planned for release in Japan, Australia, India and Germany on April 1st; Spain, Brazil, Indonesia and Canada on 1st May; and Singapore, Mexico, Thailand, and Hong Kong on 1st June.  Nielsen plans to release the enhanced Identity System across other markets on a monthly cadence following the initial releases in 2022. 

In addition, Nielsen is pleased to share that it continues to enter into and expand our relationships with both global and local data providers to power up the Nielsen Identity System. Today Nielsen has added more than 2 billion de-duplicated identifiers across markets into the Identity System, growing every day.

Sarah Miller, SVP, Product Management at Nielsen commented “With this enhancement to our Identity System we are taking another step to assure the longevity of ad measurement amidst the rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.  Because of Nielsen’s unique data assets, we are not only able to adjust and correct licensed third party user registration data using panels, we have also developed sophisticated machine learning algorithms to cluster digital IDs into people and correct for any possible imbalances from the market’s universe of users. It is this advanced data science methodology fueled by the sheer volume of Nielsen Identities that will empower the digital ad measurement into the future.”

“Nielsen continues to evolve its technologies and methodologies for independent measurement of audiences as the industry itself evolves to utilise cross-media measurement,” said Sean Cohan, Nielsen’s Chief Growth Officer and President, International. “Nielsen’s strategic measurement approach positions the company to deliver deduplicated audiences across linear and digital as part of Nielsen ONE.”