According to APIA Vote, 83% of Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders (AANHPIs) have concerns about misinformation in the U.S. election, among Democrats and Republicans alike. At the same time, 78% of Asian Americans consume news at least once a day and are also 34% more likely to trust in the accuracy of news than the general U.S. population, creating opportunities for news media and brands to connect with the fast-growing segment of the U.S. population with $1.3 trillion in buying power¹. Doing so effectively requires a deeper understanding of the relationship between Asian Americans and the news.

Where do Asian Americans get their news?

Asian Americans are more likely than the general population to report turning to social media (Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads) and news aggregator sites as their top source for news. They are also 69% more likely to rely on friends and family, going to the people in their tightly-knit community who can break down headlines with the right context and relevant information.

When it comes to newspaper content, Nielsen’s research found that Asian audiences are most likely to turn to free newspaper websites. For marketers hoping to engage AANHPI audiences this year, tapping into reliable content on non-subscription news sites and social media platforms to help educate the AANHPI voter could be a valuable connection point.

Building trust through representation

With the always-on connectivity of smartphone apps and sites that Asians prefer, how can brands tap into them to create lasting engagement? Platforms with authentic, representative content is key, as 41% of AANHPI audiences are more likely to buy from brands that advertise with news outlets they trust². 

And here’s where the influence of journalists who are representative of the community comes in. For example, ABC’s World News Tonight with co-anchor Juju Chang and MSNBC’s Morning Joe with frequent reporter Richard Lui are in the top most-watched broadcast news programs for AANHPI viewers.³ And in the 2023 Asian American Journalist Association awards, an Axios project led by three Asian journalists was a winner. Their piece Everything You Need to Know to Vote in the 2022 Midterm Election drove tremendous audience engagement in two of the top sources of news for Asian Americans, Instagram Reels (30% more than previous) and news aggregator site Flipboard (double URL open rates). Stories told about the Asian American community by members of the community create connections with audiences while providing necessary and critical information to drive change and action.

The value of in-language media

TV news programming plays a much less significant role in AANHPI news engagement compared to other audience populations, but Asian Americans are 57% more likely to get news from international television. Asians make up the fastest-growing ethnic group in the U.S. today, coming from more than 20 countries around the world and speaking more than 50 different languages. 

Connecting with the diverse AANHPI community requires more than a one-size fits all approach. In a 2023 report, Nielsen explored the attitudes and media consumption preferences of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese language speakers—representing about 40% of the Asian American population and three of the Asian languages most spoken at home.

More than 40% of total respondents ‘strongly agreed/agreed’ that Asian media offers programs and perspectives they trust. Furthermore, the study shows that more than 50% of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese respondents prefer to buy brands that advertise on programs reflecting their culture. Opportunities exist for brands that invest part of their advertising spend in in-language media platforms.

Adjusting media plans in an election year

As ad prices rise with political campaigns buying up valuable ad inventory, advertisers can benefit from rethinking their media plans during this election year and connect with Asian audiences through the social media, aggregator sites and ad-supported newspaper sites they gravitate toward. One benefit of these channels is that they present a more addressable option—giving marketers improved measurement of ROI. 

Learn more about reaching Asian American consumers in Nielsen’s latest Diverse Intelligence Series report.

Notes

¹U.S. Census Projections 2023 and Selig Center for Economic Growth 2022

²2024 Nielsen Survey on Trust in Media

³Nielsen National TV Panel, 2023

The post The power of news media: An important platform to reach Asian Americans in an election year appeared first on Nielsen.

The media buying playing field

It’s simple enough on paper: a network, TV station, streaming platform or other TV distributor has advertising inventory for sale alongside its programming; a brand (or an agency on its behalf) wants to use some of that inventory to reach customers and prospects;  if the seller’s audience is a good fit for the buyer’s intended target—and the price is right—then the deal goes through and everyone’s happy.

But in practice, media buying can get very complicated very quickly. What exactly are media buyers buying? How much inventory is there? What’s a good rate? Do all ad types perform the same? Who defines target audiences? Are there any guarantees?

Before any of those questions can be answered, the first step in the media buying journey is to understand what TV is. It’s not a disingenuous question. The TV landscape has changed a lot in recent years. From broadcast to cable, satellite, FAST TV and AVOD, viewers today have dozens of options to watch TV on their own terms. That’s great for viewers, and it gives media buyers more options, too. But every new platform comes with its own idiosyncrasies and adds another layer of complexity to the media buying equation.

Upfront and scatter

The first TV programs were sponsored by single advertisers. Campbell’s Soup sponsored Lassie; Johnson & Johnson: The Adventures of Robin Hood; Beech-Nut Gum: The Dick Clark Show; Philip Morris: I Love Lucy. It wasn’t long before the commercial pod emerged, greatly expanding the ad inventory on TV and setting the stage for media buying as we know it today.

In the U.S., TV media buyers buy advertising at the Upfronts—a weeklong event in the spring each year where networks and other distributors introduce upcoming shows—and in the scatter (or remnant) market. Doing business at the Upfronts 6 to 12 months before new shows are aired allows sellers to secure funding well ahead of a new TV season, and buyers to lock-in guaranteed placements on coveted time slots and at a fair price.

These days, around USD$20 billion worth of advertising money changes hands at the Upfronts for primetime broadcast and cable, and about the same amount for other dayparts and CTV. Another USD$20-30 billion goes to the scatter market throughout the year, giving buyers the flexibility to bid for ad placements much closer to air time.

But what does ‘air time’ mean in a world where broadcast and cable represent just half of total TV viewing, as we noted in our recent report The Next Frontier: Your guide to the 2024-25 upfronts/newfronts planning season? The convergence of linear and streaming is quickly redefining media buying.

Where is the audience?

Nielsen’s Head of Global Marketing Alison Gensheimer pointed out that “TV isn’t going anywhere, it’s going everywhere. Definitions change depending on who you talk to, and I’m starting to wonder if it even matters. For advertisers, the important question—now and forever—is where the audience is.”

Media buying negotiations have long been tied to specific network, daypart, day-of-the-week combinations because that was the only way to reach audiences loyal to specific programs. Everyone in the mid-90s wanted to buy primetime on Thursdays nights on NBC because that was when Friends and Seinfeld would air, and those shows attracted the most young adults. 

But if the ultimate objective is to reach a particular audience—whether it’s young adults, foodies, outdoor enthusiasts or new parents—a TV lineup isn’t a requirement anymore. Thanks to CTV and other data and infrastructure breakthroughs like measurement-grade identity graphs, there are ways today to reach advanced audiences on TV that don’t involve using a niche program as a surrogate.

Media buying on TV is starting to look a lot like media buying on digital platforms, doesn’t it?

How is measurement evolving at Nielsen?

At Nielsen, we’ve been reporting C3 (live + 3 days) and C7 (live + 7 days) average commercial minutes for over 15 years, and those panel-based metrics have provided and continue to provide a very robust currency for media buyers and sellers. There’s tremendous value in having a consistent metric year after year, but the level of fragmentation in the industry has reached a tipping point. 

We’re now transitioning to a big data + panel measurement methodology where the scale of big data is brought to bear to measure a wider variety of programs and get a more comprehensive view of audience behavior, and where panel data is used for validation and calibration. We’re also deploying technology capable of reporting commercials at the subminute level, making it possible for advertisers to understand the performance of a much wider selection of ad formats.

What does it mean for media buying on television?

At the moment, TV media buying is a complicated mix of tradition and modernity. Media buyers are being asked to combine the scale of linear TV with the addressability of CTV to meet brand and performance objectives. It’s no small ask, especially when media budgets are under pressure. But new measurement solutions on the horizon will bring more structure, consistency and granular insights to the negotiating table—and unlock more opportunities for both buyers and sellers.

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Marketers need to stay on top of these trends when developing cross-channel media strategies. That’s why we created The Record—a quarterly look at how U.S. audiences spend their time with audio. An important tool for advertisers, artists, broadcasters and podcasters alike, The Record offers a unique view of time spent with ad-supported content.

The total use of audio is significant—Americans spend more than four hours with audio every day¹—and it’s important to view it from multiple lenses. Consumers give nearly 70% of their daily ad-supported audio time to radio, 20% to podcasts and the rest to streaming audio (music services) or satellite radio (select channels).

The Record tracks the share of daily time spent with ad-supported audio, which represents the most important part of the audio landscape to advertisers.

A quarterly snapshot: Edison Research Share of Ear®

This chart shows how Americans spent their time with ad-supported audio in Q1 2024. 

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here.

While Americans use radio throughout their day in many different settings, most listening happens outside of the home during daylight hours. And in the car, more than 80% of ad-supported audio time goes to radio. With radio offerings that spread news, culture, music, comedy, sports talk and companionship—there are meaningful ways to reach every corner of the population.  

The following tables detail how the share of audience changes by format, age, demographic and platform for the top 15 largest-reaching AM/FM radio formats. These differentiate between the share of all radio listening and the share of streaming listening specifically (those listening to the digital streams of the stations).

Tracking radio listening by format

This chart tracks which radio formats have the highest share of listening and how that differs between total radio (over-the-air and streaming combined) and the radio streaming universe.

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here. 

The share of streaming listening to each format is also dynamic when sorted by age. The formats which have a higher share of audience for streaming are spoken word, which are inclusive of News and Sports, and rock-based formats, which include Alternative and Classic Rock. Conversely, Country and Spanish-Language music formats have significantly lower streaming shares compared to total listening.

Among younger listeners (18-34), there is much more balance between total share and streaming share which makes sense as these are the most avid audio streamers.

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here.

Even with new channels emerging every year, audio remains a cornerstone of the American media diet. This is particularly true in 2024 with marquee sports and news events like the summer Olympics and presidential election.  As marketers look at where to best engage with audiences, The Record sheds light on audio’s reach and impact. 

The Record provides a quarterly analysis of audio listening behaviors across the total radio universe. The charts represent average daily usage and share of listening for U.S. audiences.

Source

¹ Source: Edison Research, “Share of Ear®” Q1 2024

For even more audio data and insights, connect with our team of experts.

Contact us

Contact us

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When times are tight and the future is uncertain, especially amid lingering fears about recession and a sluggish ad market, it’s tempting for marketers to focus on quick wins to get some points on the board and live to fight another day. Those quick wins, however, aren’t what sustain businesses. While helpful for the next quarterly read-out, short-term sales can easily distract teams from thinking about what really drives success: long-term growth.

Those distractions can be costly. While targeted and direct marketing makes sense when consumers are feeling the pinch or a business needs to meet a sales target, these approaches aren’t as lucrative as you might think. For example, we’ve found that promotions deliver only about half of the long-term returns that media spending does. That’s because incentives typically offset natural purchase cycles. And when consumers buy earlier at a lower price or buy more at a lower price, they’re removed from the market for that product later on, which is unfavorable to the promoter. Incentives can also train consumers to buy on incentives or to look for depth of incentive, which lowers long-term profitability.

The importance of balanced marketing strategies can’t be over-emphasized, especially when you consider that brand-building efforts are a lever that drive sales: Nielsen research has found that ongoing marketing efforts account for 10%-35% of a brand’s equity. What’s more, Nielsen Compass data shows that a brand loses 2% in future revenue for every quarter it doesn’t advertise. And over the long term, lost revenue takes a long time to gain back. Our research has found that it takes up to three to five years of solid and consistent brand building effort to recover from extended periods of not advertising.

And when you remove long-term brand building, brand awareness and consideration fall, which typically reduces the effectiveness of conversion marketing efforts. If you let your brand decay, future sales tend to decline at a 1:1 ratio. Lastly, pulling back on long-term marketing increases your cost of acquisition. So the reality of a short-term marketing strategy is share contraction because you’re forgoing future sales while increasing cost to drive near-term sales.

Historical research has also found that an outsized share of voice can increase a brand’s share of market. Several years ago, Nielsen analyzed more than 120 brands across 30 categories of typical advertising to test this thinking. The study results showed that, all things being equal, a 10-point difference between share of voice and share of market ultimately led to 0.5 percentage points of extra share growth. Practically, that means that a brand with a market share of 20.5% and an excessive share of voice of 10 points would grow its share of market to 21% in a single year.

But understanding the importance of brand building is the first step. To take your brand to the next level, it’s critical to understand which tactical investments produce the best returns in the long run. As with many industry terms and phrases, “long-term” can mean different things to different brands. The same can be true about evaluating long-term impact. Some may choose to lean on downstream purchases that result from conversions or previous brand exposures. Others may opt to analyze the impact that their marketing has on driving brand equity metrics, like consideration and purchase intent.

Each of these approaches help define the foundational building blocks of a brand’s base business, but they’re very different from one another. They also work much better when they complement each other instead of as independent approaches. Said differently, long-term measurement requires a holistic effort that incorporates both of these approaches: One that looks at the impact of downstream purchases as well as how consumer perceptions are affected by marketing exposures and how they’re sustained over time. 

Consider this: The impact of a single marketing exposure is a point in time. Once the exposure passes, its effect will fade over time. Comparatively, brand perceptions aren’t confined to a single point in time. Brand perceptions also aren’t static. They can shift, which is why marketers need to reinforce their messages over time to ensure they’re frequently engaging with their target consumers. Reinforcing those messages through media investments carries significant weight. According to the ROI norms data in Nielsen Compass, the long-term impact of media can double the impact of media spend, particularly for upper-funnel channels like TV and digital video.

Aside from aggregated proof points, analytics at a brand level can show how a shift from short-term decision making to a more well-rounded marketing approach can help marketers understand how to allocate their budgets while still working to build their brands for long-term success.

For example, a national insurance company recently set out to understand the strength of its marketing efforts across channels, campaigns and KPIs. With an eye on an unpredictable economy on the horizon, the company knew that if it wanted to safeguard its marketing investments, it would need to validate them both in the present and the future. 

To get a read on how to approach its marketing in the short term, the company enlisted Nielsen to use its most recent spending data to model quotes and items for new and existing customers, as well as renewals. The models also factored in the costs associated with new customer acquisition and customer retention.

With a clear view of how to use its marketing budget efficiently, the company took its planning a step further to understand the short-term and long-term impact of marketing on sales. With the use of Nielsen’s Long-Term Effects analyses, the company was able to prove that its marketing efforts generated more than 31% increased incremental sales over the long term, thereby justifying its investments despite the economic uncertainty. The company also discovered which business lines benefitted the most from the marketing investments, as well as which marketing vehicles drove the biggest impact. 

Yes, short-term sales are appealing and can deliver results now, but longevity and long-term business vitality need effective, balanced marketing. And perhaps more importantly, marketers need the insight into their long-term efforts to keep their investments safe and their businesses growing.

This article originally appeared on MediaPost.

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Check out the on-demand session below to learn more about these key topics:

• Understanding the difference between measurement and currency
• The future of Big Data + Panels as a currency 
• Operationalizing clean room data

Learn more about Nielsen’s commitment to measurement integrity.

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In modern culture, hip-hop stands alone in this regard, and as it celebrates its 50^th birthday this month, we can see just how beloved and influential it has become.

While it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact birth of hip-hop, most music historians cite a 1973 block party in the Bronx as the event that brought the critical elements together at a large, public event. At that party, DJ Kool Herc debuted the “merry-go-round,” a style of DJing that extended the break beat of a specific song by playing two copies of the same record and switching between them at the right moments. This, however, was a full six years before the Sugarhill Gang introduced hip-hop to a wide audience with the success of its hit song “Rapper’s Delight.” The Gracenote Global Music Data content team catalogs the most highly consumed artists from around the world, including just seven artists in this 1970s era of the genre. 

Today, the sound that defines the culture has grown well beyond its Bronx roots. In fact, more than 96,000 of the most-listened to artists globally are rap and hip-hop artists, and 149 countries are home to at least one hip-hop artist. And these artists have created more than 100 sub-genres of hip-hop music.

Interest in hip-hop music has become so global, in fact, that only one-third of today’s most-listened-to hip-hop artists are from the U.S. Hip-hop is also multilingual, as hip-hop spans English and 98 other languages, dialects, creoles and regional variations¹.

Men continue to dominate rap and hip-hop, but the genre maintains a powerful base of women who hold their own on the hip-hop charts. In fact, hip-hop boasts a notable amount of gender diversity from women, mixed duos, groups and non-binary artists, especially in collaborations.

The connection to hip-hop among the Black community is undeniable, especially in the U.S., where Black audiences are 6x more likely than the general population to say it’s their favorite genre. From a listener perspective, that appeal is most evident on the radio, as hip-hop stations attract 14% of all radio listening among Black audiences. Among Black audiences 18-34, the urban contemporary/hip-hop genre accounts for 30.7% of all listening on broadcast radio and 20% of streaming audio³. And hip-hop fandom is highest in the south and among Millennials.

Hip-hop’s persistent audience engagement across media platforms represents a big opportunity for advertisers to connect with Black consumers in culturally relevant ways. And the combination of this dominant genre and trusted outlets is leading to more business with Black-owned media. According to Nielsen Ad Intel, ad spend with top Black-owned radio stations in top markets increased 92% in 2022 compared with the prior year. But the opportunity exists in video content as well. 

The hip-hop programming genre on TV is not only one of the most representative for Black talent on screen at 89%, it delivers one of the most diverse audiences as well, with about two out of three Black viewers and nearly another quarter from White audiences. 

After half a century of hit making and culture shifting, it will be interesting to watch how hip-hop innovates for the next 50 years across the media landscape. 

Sources

 ¹ Gracenote Global Music Data
²  Nielsen Scarborough USA+, Release 2 2022
³ Nielsen Radio Database, fall 2022
⁴ Nielsen RADAR, fall 2022

The post At 50 years old, Hip Hop is more than a music genre; it’s an influential force in modern culture appeared first on Nielsen.

Check out the on-demand session below to learn more about these key topics:

• Ensuring accurate audience representation for all people  
• How best to leverage measurement solutions to reach diverse audiences in a fragmented ecosystem

Learn how Nielsen is meeting the moment with Nielsen ONE. 

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When CODA won the best picture Oscar in 2022, many people with disabilities hoped it would lead to more inclusion of their stories in media. But aside from the awareness and accolades, little progress to further advance disability inclusion on screen has followed. 

And the trend isn’t limited to feature films. Video Descriptor Data from Gracenote highlights that the number of new disability-inclusive TV and movie titles has been declining since peaking at 365 in 2019. 

With limited inclusive options across TV and film, it’s not surprising that the disability community has found more of what it’s looking for across social media channels, where content creators with disabilities are actively filling the inclusivity void across traditional media channels. It’s important to note that while disabled creatives are finding success in social media, this is not a replacement for the decline in representation in TV and films.

Indeed, traditional media channels could learn from the success of disabled social media influencers and the brands they represent. Creatives with disabilities are providing brands with an authentic way to connect with an audience that’s actively seeking inclusivity. And importantly, branded posts from influencers with disabilities often outperform those from influencers without disabilities.

In a recent analysis of branded Instagram posts between May 2021 and May 2023, Nielsen InfluenceScope assessed the performance of 24 creators with disabilities to determine their effectiveness and ROI when compared against posts from creators without disabilities. Across eight industries, 278 branded posts from disabled creators generated a total of $474,000 in media value. Among the industries, the posts in the fashion industry generated the highest media value in absolute terms (40% of the total), but the posts in the electronics industry generated the highest value per post ($2,400 per post, well above the average of $1,700).

In aggregate, the posts from creators with disabilities scored 21.4% better in average media value than posts from creators without disabilities and drove 20.5% more interactions.

Across the industries, the branded posts from disabled creators outperformed posts from creators without disabilities in media value and engagement actions five times out of eight.

Case study: Tommy Hilfiger is reshaping fashion and beauty

Within the fashion industry, which accounted for 32% of the branded content in the InfluenceScope study, the #TommyAdaptive campaign for Tommy Hilfiger’s Adaptive collection has benefitted from the support of 26 different influencers, including three with disabilities: Jillian Mercado (@jillianmercado), Tiffany Yu (@imtiffanyyu) and Lauren “Lolo” Spencer (@itslololove). Over the past two years, the campaign has generated 257,000 interactions and $106,000 in media value.

On average, the campaign has achieved an engagement rate of 2.6% per post, collected an average of 6,000 interactions per post (more than 40% higher than the fashion industry average) and generated an average media value of $2,500 per post (also more than 40% higher than the fashion industry average).

The brand’s focus on designing for the needs of all people and the effectiveness of the digital campaign have resulted in an array of positive comments to the 47 branded posts, with 38% highlighting the brand’s focus on inclusivity and 31% expressing an appreciation for clothing that fits people with specific needs.

The brand’s focus on designing for the needs of all people and the effectiveness of the digital campaign have resulted in an array of positive comments to the 47 branded posts, with 38% highlighting the brand’s focus on inclusivity and 31% expressing an appreciation for clothing that fits people with specific needs.

While the TV screen remains the dominant media option for Americans, accounting for just under 5 hours per day¹, disability representation across broadcast, cable and streaming programming remains remarkably low. 

This, in turn, limits the opportunity for brands to be present in disability-inclusive content. In fact, Nielsen’s latest Attitudes on Representation study² found that 34% of respondents said they don’t believe there’s enough content that represents them on TV. 

The upside of digital connectivity and new media channels

Comparatively, Americans spend an average of 3 hours and 23 minutes with their computers, smartphones and tablets per day³, which provide access to an even greater variety of media choice, including content that they believe better represents them. Newer media options, including social media, offer greater inclusivity, which provide brands with more opportunities to embrace and show support for the disabled community by being present in the inclusive content that isn’t available in traditional media channels.

Sources:

1. Q4 2022 National TV panel; time spent includes live TV, time-shifted TV, TV connected device usage.
2. Nielsen Attitudes on Representation on TV Study, April 2022
3. Q4 2022 National TV panel

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Creating great content is only half the battle. In our current age of media hyper-fragmentation, it may be even less than that. For broadcasters, publishers and platforms, the real trick is making sure your audience can find the right content at the right time, every time. And the single greatest asset in your arsenal is the metadata that powers content discovery. 

No matter how many new media channels emerge, which viewing format is most popular or how large content libraries grow, granular metadata should be part of your content distribution strategy. It’s critical to improving discoverability and enhancing your content across platforms, languages and locations.

Here are three ways to build a scalable, resilient video content distribution strategy. 

1. Standardize your metadata 

As of June 2023, Gracenote video data notes there are just over 1 million video titles across linear and streaming channels in the U.S. alone. Now multiply that by the number of different countries and languages those platforms support. And then, while you’re at it, further multiply all of those titles by the metadata they generate: each movie or episode’s cast list, run time, plot, genre, crew, etc. It’s a staggering amount of information.

Without standardization, platforms in every region could organize this data in their own unique way, forcing international distributors to change how their content is tagged, stored and shared every time if they want it to remain searchable. This tedium blocks both content distributors and providers’ ability to scale their content across different languages and platforms and limits the capacity to enhance their metadata strategy beyond the basics, leading to a suboptimal discovery experience for audiences. 

One way to achieve metadata standardization is to rely on universal content identifiers. These IDs are persistent tags that identify a piece of content in a way that works across all platforms and screens. They link basic metadata like titles, imagery descriptions and cast details, but they also can link to much more advanced data sets like content mood, theme, scenario or even personalized imagery tailored to the viewer’s interests. 

When standardized, these universal IDs can sort, display and contextualize a piece of content across the entire entertainment ecosystem. There are companies, like Gracenote, that will standardize—and then enrich—your metadata for you. This standardization and enrichment ensures interoperability and automates and improves how your metadata gets tagged and sorted based on deep taxonomies, effectively scaling your content’s discoverability. 

When assessing metadata partners, you should look for the following: 

• Cross-platform content availability to ensure your content is searchable wherever your audiences are 
• Global dataset with local coverage that helps your content feel relevant no matter the language or region 
• API delivery for near real-time metadata updates
• Unified data schema to ease metadata onboarding across different partners

2. Stay local, think global 

We are living in an era of widespread globalization of media. Global media is nothing new, but it has taken on a different flavor in the past few years. For example, let’s say a show is gaining traction in Japan. It’s in Japanese and created for Japanese audiences.  A fan of the show takes a snippet and turns that into a meme which then goes viral on social media. Suddenly, there are people around the world interested in watching the show. The content hasn’t changed, but the audiences’ context for why they’re interested has. 

This has been happening for years on streaming services, and, as streaming and connected TV (CTV) viewership continues to rise, so will this trend. There will be a growing opportunity—and even expectation—around ensuring content promotion is globally accessible without losing out on local relevance. This concept is called “glocalization.” So, the way our aforementioned show is promoted in Japan would likely be much different than how it should be promoted in Sweden or Mexico.

Creating a scalable content distribution strategy means ensuring global content is readily available while prioritizing regional nuances and preferences in promotion and discovery.

Universal IDs and the metadata they support let you set your content up for multi-region and multi-language opportunities by creating metadata consistencies from the outset. This lets discovery platforms focus on building compelling experiences for your audience, rather than wrangling the underlying data sets. 

3. Prioritize portability

Europe is forecasted to have over 4 billion IoT connections by 2025. The average U.S. household has about 22 connected devices, which is roughly six devices per person. By the end of 2023, nearly 90% of internet users in Southeast Asia will also be smartphone users. Clearly, audiences are hopping from screen to screen every day. That means, in 2023, a scalable distribution strategy should allow content to be discovered across any media type.

Once again, universal IDs and standardized metadata let you capitalize on multimedia opportunities by doing three things particularly well: 

1. Seamless integration across different platforms 
2. Speed up the distribution process by working across the full media ecosystem
3. Fuel personalized imagery and descriptions tailored to any platform

For example, the same content metadata that powers search and discovery for video content on a mobile device or smart TV could also power video discovery in the car, as touchscreens for rear and passenger seats have become the norm in new models. It even works across audio listening. While content metadata powers music and podcast search and discovery across streaming platforms, music listening on smart TVs, smart speakers or in connected cars, can all be powered by the same metadata.

Ultimately, your content distribution strategy is only as strong as your metadata strategy. When you standardize and elevate your metadata, you ensure your content is easier to discover for more people. 

For more ways to improve your metadata strategy, get to know the Gracenote ID.

The post How to scale your video content distribution strategy appeared first on Nielsen.

To do so, the performers plan to get intense with audiences by leaning into energetic moods and shifting away from the neutral moods that were more prevalent last year. In total, seven of this year’s 37 songs fall into the “energizing” mood category¹—the most prominent primary mood descriptor² across all of the entries. While we saw an equal number of “energizing” entries last year, this year’s contest will feature more songs with other energetic undertones.

Last year, for example, “yearning” was the most prevalent mood (there were nine) among the song entries; this year, there are just four. Similarly, there are no songs with a “sensual” primary mood descriptor in this year’s contest; last year, there were five. There are also twice as many songs with “excited” and “defiant” as the primary moods: four and two, respectively.

The shift toward more energetic moods bodes well for competitors, as half of the 24 winning songs between 1998 and 2022 were characterized by five moods at the more energetic side of the spectrum: “energizing,” “excited,” “fiery,” “rowdy” and “urgent.” And in the last decade, seven of the last 10 winning songs have expressed at least one of these moods. This year, 19 of the 37 entries express “energizing,” “excited,” “fiery,” “rowdy” or “urgent” as their main mood.

Of these five moods, “fiery” is the most common among winners since 1998, including last year, when “Stefania,” Ukraine’s entry from hip-hop band Kalush Orchestra, took the top prize. “Stefania” was one of three entries with a “fiery” primary mood.

Dana International’s win for Israel in 1998 with her song “Diva” was the first entry with a “fiery” primary mood descriptor to take the top prize. Her win also kicked off a trend that we’ve seen hold through 2022: 14 winners have featured moods at the more energetic end of the spectrum. Israel’s win in 1998 was also more in tune with the pop music of the time—a shift that has carried through most of the contests in the years that followed.

Comparatively, the winning songs of the first 42 editions of the contest, which started in 1956, were less energetic: Only four of the 45 winners (there were four co-winners in 1969) during this period were songs with more energetic moods. The primary moods of the others had average and below-average energy levels.

In total, this year’s entries cover less emotional range than last year, as the songs cover just 12 primary moods—down from 15 in 2022. Entries are more heavily stacked in the positive and energetic areas of the mood spectrum, which puts more songs in contention to win from a recent historical perspective. In looking at the top 10 contenders to win, based on the odds at eurovisionworld.com, seven exhibit one of the five moods that have dominated in recent years, suggesting that history will likely repeat itself when the final vote is tallied following this year’s contest.

This year’s contest starts May 9, 2023. The semi-finals are May 11, and the final is May 13.

Notes

¹ As categorized by Nielsen’s Gracenote music data
² Gracenote’s Sonic Mood Descriptors feature 25 level one mood descriptors. These descriptors indicate the most prominent and distinct elements in a song, such as rhythm, melody, and timbre. Combined, they provide a “mood profile” of a song, which indicates the primary mood and strength.

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