After announcing earlier this month that up to 8% of installed PPM devices became inactive during the move to a new audio collection site, Nielsen has postponed releasing all of the December Week One data to stations due this week until Monday, December 5 in order to conduct “a thorough market-by-market review to ensure that the audience estimates meet our quality standards.”
Nielsen will hold a webinar with client stations on Friday, December 2 at 2pm to share the results of their analysis.
Original Report 11/10: Nielsen has announced that up to 8% of PPM devices across all 48 markets lost connectivity to their servers and became inactive during measurement for week one of the December survey.
49% of replacement meters have been activated with the rest expected to do so in the coming days. Nielsen intends to use additional weighting to adjust for demographic and geographic imbalances.
As the result of a move to a new audio data collection site last weekend, we discovered that 8% of the installed PPMs across the aggregate of 48 PPM markets lost connectivity and became inactive. This connectivity issue began in week one (11/3-11/9) of the December PPM monthly survey.
Our Panel Relations Specialists have already been in contact with these homes and all affected panelists have now been sent new PPMs. As of today, 49% of the replacement meters are back online. We expect the balance to come online in the next several days.
We forecast the percentage of installed and fully operational meters eligible for in tab will be 97% for the month of December and 92% for week one of December across the aggregate of markets. Weighting will adjust for demographic and geographic imbalances.
Therefore, buyers and sellers will be able to transact business with confidence. Please note that lower in-tab doesn’t equate to lower ratings. However, temporarily higher weights may contribute to more variation during the period of time it takes for these panelist to be back in-tab and fully accounted for.
Nielsen is conducting an analysis to evaluate panel representation and impact to audience estimates. We will share the results of this analysis with you during the week of November 21st prior to the delivery of the Weeklies data for week one of December.
Nielsen is committed to meeting high quality standards and we are taking steps to assure that these type of issues do not recur.
