Nielsen Now Knows When You Are Streaming
The company known for measuring television ratings said Netflix and YouTube are far ahead of their digital rivals, but viewers still spend more time watching cable and network TV.
Nielsen on Thursday announced that it had moved a step closer toward cracking one of the great questions of the modern entertainment world: How big, exactly, is streaming?
In recent years, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, Hulu, Disney+ and Apple TV have revolutionized the viewing habits of millions of Americans, but the streaming companies have been fiercely protective of their numbers, sharing data on how many people are watching very selectively, if at all.
Now Nielsen, the 98-year-old research firm that for decades has had an effective monopoly on measuring TV ratings in the United States, has a new metric that it says allows it to make an apples-to-apples comparison, on a percentage basis, of how many people are streaming shows and films on their TVs versus how many are watching traditional cable and broadcast channels.
For the time being, Nielsen reports, people are spending more time watching TV the old-fashioned way — but streaming is gaining fast.
