Amazon strikes three-year deal with Nielsen to measure Thursday Night Football audiences

Amazon has reached a three-year agreement with Nielsen to measure its Thursday Night Football audiences across Prime Video and its gaming website, Twitch, bringing a hallmark of broadcast television into the NFL’s new exclusive streaming arrangement.

Nielsen has agreed to measure Amazon’s Thursday Night Football audiences for the next three seasons starting this fall, when Prime Video and Twitch will begin broadcasting the games exclusively as part of the tech giant’s $1 billion-per-season media contract with the NFL.

Now, instead of using streaming figures provided by Amazon, the NFL and its advertisers can get the same kinds of data sets created by Nielsen for other league broadcasts, making apples-to-apples comparisons a bit easier.

Nielsen will measure NFL audiences for Prime Video, Twitch’s simulcast featuring popular streamers Dude Perfect, local affiliates airing the games on network television, as well as all pre- and post-game shows.

‘We are committed to delivering comparable, comprehensive measurement of all audiences, across all platforms, and this agreement to measure TNF viewership is a testament to that commitment,’ Deirdre Thomas, Nielsen’s managing director for U.S. audience measurement product sales, said in a statement.

‘Our collaboration with Nielsen will allow us to provide advertisers with familiar campaign measurement to make apples-to-apples comparisons across their multi-channel media investments,’ Srishti Gupta, director of media measurement for Amazon Ads, said in his company’s statement.

Amazon will continue providing its own metrics to advertisers.

‘Additionally, advertisers will have access to metrics from Amazon that will provide actionable insights to understand brand awareness, engagement, and sales. This powerful combination of first and third-party measurement is something only Amazon can provide.’

In 2021, Thursday Night Football averaged almost 15 million viewers for 11 joint Fox/NFL Network simulcasts, as well as nearly 8 million for the NFL Network’s four exclusive games.

However, Amazon is not expected to match those numbers – or at least not at first.

Rather, executives are instead anticipating audiences around 12.5 million, according to Ad Age.

That expectation has resulted in a drop in ad rates, with one buyer claiming to Ad Age that a 30-second spot would cost around $500,000, compared to $635,439 for Fox’s Thursday Night Football broadcasts last season.

Currently an estimated 80 million US households have Prime Video.

The agreement is a good sign for Nielsen, a company with an uncertain future in the age of digital streaming services.

Exacerbating matters, industry oversight board, the Media Rating Council, suspended Nielsen’s national TV accreditation last year after the company revealed that it had undercounted viewers in some cases for an extended period of time. Such a mistake would presumably hurt Nielsen customers’ ad revenues.