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APIs Make Nielsen’s National and Local TV Data More Accessable

2 minute read | September 2015

In today’s world of big data, having data is only part of the equation. Having smart data—data that is understandable and actionable—and being able to access it quickly are helping companies be innovative and fast moving.

And that’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of application programming interfaces (APIs) for Nielsen’s overnight national and local TV data! Our new TV APIs open the door to our data, providing our clients faster, more flexible access to the raw numbers, as well as the ability to feed them into their preferred business intelligence tools or proprietary internal dashboards, such as financial forecasting tools, for smarter insights.

In the past, some clients have used scripted, programmatic APIs to “stitch” together data sources. However, this work was manual and complex. The new APIs will enable fast, flexible, on-demand access to Nielsen data. Additionally, clients can use the APIs to pull Nielsen data into their own internal databases, allowing them to conduct different kinds of ad hoc analyses.

“APIs represent a significant step in Nielsen’s innovation on behalf of clients,” said Lynda Clarizio, president of Nielsen’s U.S. Media business. “We’re pursuing new levels of openness, flexibility, speed and integration to give our clients access to the data they need, when and how they need it.”

And our clients agree! “Technology and data are invaluable tools in today’s dynamic and complex environment, and we want to ensure that our brands and businesses have the information and customized reporting they need to support agile decision-making,” noted John Honeycutt, chief technology officer, Discovery Communications. “We are pleased that Nielsen is developing tools to meet industry needs and are excited to work with them on this important initiative.”

“As a beta client, we are thrilled that Nielsen has opened up data access via APIs,” said Thomas Ziangas, senior vice president, Research and Insights, AMC Networks. “We look forward to fully implementing Nielsen’s APIs, which have already shown the ability to greatly improve the efficiency of our daily workflow and help us uncover critical insights faster.”

“Nielsen’s focus on open, common API standards to deliver data that our teams at IPG Mediabrands use on a daily basis is a great step forward,” said Bill Berger, vice president, Client Technology, IPG Mediabrands. “The newly published APIs offer a dramatic reduction in complexity associated with the delivery of national and local television ratings data, and the new technology supports existing use cases like data warehousing, as well as low-latency, on-demand data access for applications with dynamic data needs.”

“We are pleased to see Nielsen’s making important investments in APIs to better support their partners by making data access more open,” said Kevin Conroy, chief strategy and data officer and president, Enterprise Development at Univision. “More open access enables the analytics we need to tell richer and more accurate stories about our audience.”

Nielsen’s national TV APIs will launch next week, followed by local TV APIs in November.