Commentary

Inputs Vs. Outputs, And Nielsen's New 'Outcomes Marketplace'

• by Joe Mandese , July 31, 2025

More than a century after Arthur C. Nielsen launched a company to measure media exposure to consumers -- and increasingly, how it affects them -- his namesake company is once again elevating the role of outputs in its products and services to advertisers, launching what it is dubbing an "Outcomes Marketplace" that will combine Nielsen's proprietary data with those of other marketing and media researchers to offer advertisers and agencies with "a more comprehensive view of an ad’s outcome alongside reach and frequency data."

The move obviously has implications for media planners and buyers, as well as their clients, but it also raises new questions about what the inputs and outputs of media measurement actually are.

The move comes a week after a former division of private equity-owned Nielsen that explicitly measured outputs like sales lift and conversions -- Nielsen IQ, now NIQ -- began trading as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange, reminding me of a long history of the companies' split-ups, reintegrations, private and public offerings over the century of their existence.

Company historical footnotes aside, Nielsen's announcement this morning raises additional questions about what media measurement inputs are vs. outcomes, announcing that its first third-party Outcomes Marketplace partner is Realeyes, a company known for measuring the attention consumers pay to media and advertising.

In the brief modern history of ad industry outcomes measurement standards -- the Media Rating Council's September 2022 "Outcomes and Data Quality Standards," attention metrics are not listed as "measurement of delivery and exposure," not outcomes, which the MRC standards describe as things like lead generation, requests for information, sales lift, brand lift, conversions, etc.

To that end, Nielsen executives say the outcome measurement portion of the Realeyes partnership will come from pairing Realeyes' data with Nielsen's own, proprietary snapshots of brand and sales outcomes metrics in the marketplace.

What's not clear from this morning's announcement is whether future Outcomes Marketplace offerings will be generating outcome metrics solely from Nielsen's data, or from the other third parties it is partnering with.

Nielsen has not disclosed other Outcome Marketplace partner plans, but its announcement this morning does include a quote from Krishna Subramanian, the CEO of influencer marketing platform Captiv8, which big agency holding company Publicis acquired earlier this year.

"Nielsen’s attention metrics raise the bar for influencer marketing," Subramanian says, adding, "We’ve always pushed for deeper, more meaningful measurement and now we can go beyond surface-level metrics to show real campaign impact."

Nielsen's move also comes as big agency holding companies like Omnicom, WPP, Publicis and others have been investing deeply in their own, proprietary outcomes-based measurement data, especially Omnicom's big acquisition of Flywheel a couple of years ago, indicating that from their point-of-view, the future of planning and buying is more about owning elite outcome data sets than licensing it from others.

That said, Nielsen says its new Outcomes Marketplace will "announce more best in class outcomes measurement providers later this year that will deliver metrics across the full spectrum of campaign performance, including ad engagement, audience attention, brand perception shifts, and sales conversions."

I look forward to covering those, as well as any new outcomes measurement deals, products and services coming from other industry suppliers. Maybe even NIQ?