Nielsen: Los Angeles Ratings Snafu Limited To August

Limiting the Damage

NIELSEN finished its investigation of LOS ANGELES PPM respondents for the months of JANUARY through JULY 2016, and have concluded that no PPM ratings during that period need to be reissued, and that the problem squarely lay with the 35 homes in the AUGUST monitoring period (NET NEWS, 8/22). The official statement is as follows:

As communicated on AUGUST 22nd, out of an abundance of caution 35 homes were removed from the LOS ANGELES AUGUST PPM survey because quality protocols were not followed.

We have completed an impact analysis for all months in 2016. The analysis compares estimates without the affected homes to the originally published estimates. These homes had extremely light radio exposure overall and there was zero impact on total radio listening. In addition, there was no material impact on station-level ratings during the months of JANUARY through JULY. Therefore, the Los Angeles data we have previously published will not be reissued. Impact data is available to clients upon request.

When this issue was identified in early AUGUST, we launched a comprehensive investigation to determine root cause, what actions, if any, may be required for prior months in 2016 and whether this issue affected other PPM markets.

The investigation determined that an isolated personnel issue caused several households to be improperly brought online between JANUARY and JULY 2016. Additionally, the investigation confirmed that this issue was isolated to LOS ANGELES and that no media outlets were involved.
NIELSEN is constantly innovating new compliance checks to ensure the quality of its PPM panel. In this specific case, NIELSEN moved quickly to identify the root cause and immediately took corrective action.

Please contact your NIELSEN Client Solutions representative with any questions.

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