YouSaid · the spoken record

David Kenny

lines on the record: 30
first: 2021-10-28
most recent: 2021-10-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Doing here with Nielsen one is to truly create more global metrics and help this content travel around the globe more quickly. It'll help everybody”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, this kind of had an American view. Nielsen, of course, is a global company. And some of these shifts are happening even more rapidly outside the United States. And quite honestly, one of the great advantages of streaming is, I think, is going to create a lot more global content. So you look at a show like Squid Games right now or Lukin, you know, a couple of great Netflix shows, one in South Korea, one in France. I think you're going to see this on all these platforms, Apple, Amazon, Hulu, the whole media business is going to become more global. And I think that's super exciting. I think that's going to open up so many new possibilities for creativity. Back to inclusion, I think it's going to have all of us understand that the world is not American. The world is global. We're going to learn a lot more about humanity around the world as a result of this. So I certainly hope one of the second order effects out of the things.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because they didn't have all the immigrants in the census. So it wasn't popular with a bunch of folks, but it's why we wrote an amicus brief. It's why we went to the Supreme Court. It's why we took out ads. It's why I wrote an op-ed, in that case, in the New York Times. And we did these things to be sure that people understood what was at stake by anything that would have a bias in the core truth set. More recently, some of the things that are around the topic of voter suppression are a place I felt we needed to speak up to because voting is a nether way of knowing the truth. Just like I don't want anybody to be suppressed from a Nielsen rating. I don't want to be suppressed from democracy either. So I don't think every societal issue is an issue we need to speak up on. I think CEOs need to decide what's important for their companies. As individuals, we should do whatever we want. But as CEOs, I think you got to focus on your companies. But I think when...”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you think you've got to come back to a basic belief that everybody has the same 24 hours a day and everybody has a different amount of money and people choose where they're going to invest both? It's easy to critique media because you don't like what they say or it's different than what you believe or somehow you don't think it's fact-based. I think really figuring out how you're going to win the audience over to what you believe in to your content and to your set of the facts is key. So I just think there's got to be a lot more fact-based throughout. I'm just a big believer the way we're going to serve the industry is back to telling the truth about the audience. Early on in my tenure there was a movement to add a question about immigration to the US Census. That would have, in my opinion, made the U.S. Census less”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When it's attacked, it kind of pains me. So everything we can do to create a healthy, vibrant, trust-based media, I just think it's a key role for us to play here.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At stake for Nielsen and the industry is do we have a truth set that we can all trust so that the industry can continue to scale? And can that truth set really unite legacy broadcast signals with the high growth streaming signals? I think the audience needs that. I think the economy needs that. I think the advertisers need it. So I think there's a lot on our shoulders to get this right. I do not think it will happen if everybody builds their own measurement. I don't think it will happen with seven different currencies or metrics that hasn't worked in any other economy. And parts of the world that have tried that in the past in media, it hasn't worked particularly well. So I do feel there's a big responsibility for us and for the entire industry. I feel that responsibility in an industry I really care about, an industry that I think is so important to society having free journalism is so important, I think, to education.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually did my last board of directors meeting that way because a couple of the directors couldn't come absolutely is working and you really do have a different discussion people do not feel left out you're reminded of everybody who's there it's not like the people who are not in the room have to holler don't forget me because you see them right in front of you so yeah i think it's tactical but i think it's made a big difference”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because there are a lot of things that were happening around the world that we just weren't all aware of until this pandemic forced us to hear everybody equally.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, one of the great advantages of the pandemic has been that everybody's tile on Zoom or Google Meet was the same size. It's allowed voices to come in and we weren't hearing before. A lot of our international colleagues, folks who live time zones away from New York, it was a lot easier for them to come to an hour meeting. It wasn't three days of travel. So we heard more from what was going on in Mumbai and Dubai and Milan than before getting all those voices has been great. So I don't want to lose that. And as we've started to have some meetings that are hybrid with some of us together, we still have everybody open their laptops. so that everybody is still on the screen so that the people not physically in the room don't somehow have less of a voice. And I think that equalization is something I do not want to lose. It was such a pleasant surprise. And quite honestly, it advanced our innovation.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amount of content and in an infinite amount of different ways people can watch it. So the way you measure that is different. And having people realize we can fulfill our purpose, but measure it differently, you know, it's a culture change. Cultures are harder to move over Zoom, honestly. We've certainly, I think, continue to make progress, but I underestimated the degree of culture change that we're going to need to undertake.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, having seen transformations before, some of it looks familiar, but I would say when you're a company as successful as Nielsen, what's been key is to have people really embrace a growth mindset. I always say that nostalgia is the enemy of optimism. Either you believe nostalgically that the best years were in the past or you believe optimistically the best years are in the future. And the degree to which I've had to sort of wrestle that was maybe a little bigger than I might have expected because there is a culture that's grown up with the authority and respect that comes with being the gold standard. We take that very seriously, but it needs to evolve because the way we're consuming is quite different. The whole system was originally built on a schedule. The rating was what market share did this network have between nine and ten p.m. on Thursday. Everything was around the schedule. There is no schedule in streaming. There's none. It's infinite.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listen, people are going to use the data however they want to. I think, first of all, we're just trying to tell people what's going on on the screen and also what's going on with the audience so they can put the two together. But I would say the more forward thinkers are using this to figure out just how broad of an appeal an inclusive caste would have. Because I think when you actually see people who may be a different race than you in a television show and come to love that character, it kind of changes the way you feel about people in your everyday life as well. Or you see somebody who has a different sexual orientation than you do. It allows you to kind of see that as more normalized because you've seen it, you know, on shows that you're enjoying. I certainly hope that people are using GraceNote to be broad scaled. I certainly do not think fragmentation is good for a healthy media system. We really want to make the best media future for all people.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Data is not just an image on the show, but it tells us who's the cast. And it tells us who is behind the camera. And so we use”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, to explain it, let me step back a minute because Graysoat is the other half of Nielsen. So far, this conversation has largely been about audience measurement and ratings. So Grace note is at its core a meta library. So every episode of every professional TV show, almost every film is tagged with a Grace Note ID. And that's used by a lot of folks to set up content. So a lot of cable systems, if you use the remote to decide what to watch tonight, you'll get an image of the show that shows up on your TV that comes off the Grace Note library. Or if you're in your car and you're listening to music and the album cover comes up on the screen that comes off the Grace Note Library. So at the basic level, it's the UPC code for content and it's used to help people find content that they're interested in. It's got all 10 of the top video player distribution companies in the United States. It's got about 20% share in Europe and growing quickly.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Time matters because that's how much engagement you had, and we see people standardizing on time just, you know, this week when Netflix launched its earnings, they quoted Nielsen. And then they also said, just as we measure share of time, they're going to start reporting their own numbers by hours spent watching their shows. So time is key, but so is frequency as an advertiser. Who did you reach and how often did you reach them? Otherwise, if you've got all those hours by one, you know, family watching 20 hours a day, that's quite different than reaching 10 families, two hours a day.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. A number of processes will change as we change. It'll become easier to do a media plan because you'll start with an audience and who do you want to reach? How often do you want to reach them? And when you've got a shared cross media metric across all of it, you can just manage for time. And so it'll really make the advertiser and agency life simpler. And I think more accurate. But then as the sellers come, they've got to make sure that they can serve that audience regardless of what platform they're on.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and then move forward fully to a new model, which is a single metric whether the signal came over streaming or broadcast.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trust me, there are people who want it to be slower too, because this will be a big change for them. So part of it is industry change and very active engagement with some agencies, big advertisers, tech platforms and media companies to make sure it all works. We now have most of the streaming platforms. We've gone from 10 to 17 this year. We continue to cover 85% of the streaming platforms directly, and we need to keep adding to that. We need to really work on comparability. You say it simple. It should be simple. We should be able to measure time and measure time in the same way across all of that. There's a lot of data science to get that exactly right. And so we want to validate it. This is a product that will become a currency. So you've got to make sure you've got all the quality controls. We're going to get components out throughout the next several quarters, but want to have it all finished by the end of next year so that people can have the following year to compare the old and the new.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what they're all competing for. Everybody who produces a show, everybody who makes a film, everybody who writes an ad has a product to sell, they're all trying to reach the part of the audience that's most important to them and know who they reached and how often they reach them. And that's why we're important to that equation. Listeners, Bob here, if you listen to rapid response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the rapid response feed. The guess and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from the Devilware's Prada. It takes about ten seconds to find just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, listen, we have a really good commercial team that tries to put themselves in the shoes of their clients and understands what they need. And also, you are right, there are tensions because we have buyers and sellers that both use Nielsen. And I have really good relationships with the other CEOs. And what's interesting is, you know, in any company, CEOs have this privilege of looking out and this responsibility to kind of see the future three, four years. And I really like the CEOs of the media companies and learn a lot every time I speak with them. I do consider our clients friends, but I also consider, you know, our real role here is to keep being the truth teller because that's the only way any of these businesses will actually survive long term. You can't defy gravity.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, in the end, I think we have to just keep reminding everybody that the way we best serve them is to tell them the truth. And sometimes people don't like the truth in the short run, but they're all going to be better businesses because they have it. It is the responsibility of being a measurement company versus an analytics company. In measurement, you've got to get to a true set that everybody can trust.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's always been hard to say because we exist as a measure between the buyer and seller of advertising, or quite honestly, the buyer and seller of content. Our most important customer is actually the audience, and that does not change. I do think our business model will change because I certainly think as some new platforms come in, win the Emmys, win the audience, get scale, they're going to need Nielsen more. So we've certainly got more growth in the parts of media that are growing than we do in the parts of media that are declining, which makes sense.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, there are a lot of industries where the role of independent measurement helps with pricing and quite honestly helps with value. And we see that with S&P and Moody's in the debt markets. We see that with Gartner and Forrester in the tech markets. Nielsen has a very similar role in the media market. The video players you mention, YouTube, Amazon Prime, even Hulu, all of them showed up at the upfronts with Nielsen measurement this year. They're all saying, you need that validation. I would also say it's not just my opinion. A number of big advertisers, the ANA and the Association of National Advertisers in the United States, the World Federation of Advertisers on the global scale have all come out saying we need independent measurement. And quite honestly, we need accredited measurement. And I think that the digital platforms are on board with that. So interestingly enough, what you don't want to do is change.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It absolutely is changing. And in fact, some of our bigger clients today are streaming platforms that are our new entrants. So even our customer mix is shifting. And that's on the media side of the equation. On the other side, the advertisers who use us to decide how to invest, they absolutely need to make sure they're measuring streaming. So there's a lot of factors here. And this suspension is just the traditional broadcast side. And we continue to produce the ratings that the industry operates on even with a suspended accreditation. But the streaming players are also really making sure we're measuring streaming properly. And I honestly think any media company is going to have to be streaming first to stay relevant. So they're all going to have to come along to this.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, listen, I think, of course, they were different for that reason. To be fair, if there's a machine error, you should take that data out. So there were some errors that we found after the fact that I don't think it fundamentally moved the needle, but they were enough to say we really need to get the panel back to its size. We need to go back to normal practice and recover for the year that we weren't able to be in home. So we're working double time right now. But this is largely a discussion around broadcasts, which is less than half of viewing. The majority of viewing is streaming now, which is done in a different way. And we're working hard to make that happen too.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we visit the homes frequently. And it's also the way we sign up new people. So that certainly faced some issues. We were clear about that. It was obvious, I think. A lot of businesses had to change their practices. We were going to be responsible citizens and did our best to do everything we could outside the homes to maintain things. But in retrospect, we could have communicated Fix it. What I don't want is to create noise that diverts from the bigger issue, which is how do we measure streaming? Because that's really what's happened, is the behavior has changed dramatically during the pandemic.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If somebody unplugged a machine or they bought a new TV and they didn't hook it up right to the new TV properly or they brought other devices.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, and you know, for folks who aren't close to the wonkiness of accreditation, as we produce an estimate or a rating every day of what people are watching or listening to in the case of audio, those are built with models that use a lot of big data and they're validated by panels of actual people. And the panels are important for validating those models, just as any AI model I've ever been involved with, you needed to have empirical evidence. So the way we do that is we have 40,000 families, a little more than that, around the country that represent every geography, every ethnic group, every income level to make sure we represent America in those ratings. During the pandemic, you couldn't go into their homes to fix that. So that was a challenge.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it's an interesting year for everybody who's in media, and I think it's important to put all that in context. Certainly our first priority is to measure the audience and represent her however, wherever, and whenever she wants to consume media. And so we've got many clients who are happier with their metrics because if you've got a big streaming platform, if you have gotten new viewers onto your platform, Nielsen ratings show that. If you're in the traditional platforms, of course, the ratings went the other way. And so that does cause people to get cranky. And to be fair, there were absolute real challenges with maintaining the panel part of our measurement during the height of the pandemic before vaccinations, you really couldn't go in people's homes. So we are recovering from that. But I think there is going to continue to be noise all around media as new viewership and new patterns settle in.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An interesting year for everybody who's in media, the industry started to say there could be something wrong. Accreditation does its job and they said we should suspend accreditation until you get it fixed. So now we're going about fixing it. Broadcast is less than half of viewing. The majority of viewing is streaming now. Way we best serve them is to tell them the truth. Sometimes people don't like the truth Can rank studios, networks, platforms by how inclusive they are. The more forward thinkers are using this to figure out just how broad of an appeal in inclusive caste would have. We went to the Supreme Court. We took out ads. I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times to be sure that people understood what was at stake when truth is challenged. I, as the CEO of Nielsen, have to speak up about it.”
2021-10-28 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The truth about what we watch, with Nielsen’s David Kenny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT