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Nielsen Launches APIs for Overnight National and Local TV Data

4 minute read | September 2015

New York – Sept. 28, 2015 – Nielsen today announced the launch of application programming interfaces (APIs) for Nielsen’s overnight national and local TV data. The new APIs will enable fast, flexible, on-demand access to Nielsen data. This launch follows a successful test run with clients this summer, including AMC Networks, Discovery Communications, Disney-ABC Television Group, Fox Broadcasting Co., IPG Mediabrands and Univision Communications. Nielsen’s national TV APIs will launch next week, followed by local TV APIs in November.

Nielsen’s APIs unlock a range of new benefits for clients providing a direct pipeline into their internal systems. Clients can leverage these APIs to conduct powerful ad-hoc analyses that involve large volumes of data, including custom analytics and mobile dashboards.

Nielsen has been working in beta mode with many clients over the past several months to collect feedback and improve the APIs.

“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 & 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 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, VP, 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 support the industry’s continued movement toward direct, dynamic, real-time data solutions,” said Mia Rondinella, VP of Consumer Data & Analytics for the Disney-ABC Television Group. “Nielsen’s API solution is a step in the right direction and we look forward to its continued evolution.”

“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, AMC Networks, SVP Research & Insights. “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.”

“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.”

Nielsen’s TV APIs provide clients faster, more flexible access to data to feed into their preferred business intelligence tools or proprietary internal dashboards, such as financial forecasting tools. They also reduce manual effort involved in “stitching” data together from multiple reports using scripted, programmatic API calls. 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.

About Nielsen

Nielsen N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global performance management company that provides a comprehensive understanding of what consumers Watch and Buy. Nielsen’s Watch segment provides media and advertising clients with Total Audience measurement services across all devices where content—video, audio and text—is consumed. The Buy segment offers consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers the industry’s only global view of retail performance measurement. By integrating information from its Watch and Buy segments and other data sources, Nielsen provides its clients with both world-class measurement as well as analytics that help improve performance.  Nielsen, an S&P 500 company, has operations in over 100 countries that cover more than 90% of the world’s population. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

CONTACT:

Nielsen: Brendan McCarthy, 1+917-224-7597, brendan.mccarthy@nielsen.com