The Transformation of Media Consumption and Loyalty in the Digital Era

Change, though often resisted, holds the promise of new beginnings. As consumers transition from conventional media consumption habits toward streaming platforms, many businesses find themselves grappling with the uncertainty of what lies ahead. The playbook for garnering the most accurate customer data and understanding your market share has been rewritten.

Yet, for Nielsen Chairman and CEO David Kenny, an avid innovator, such change doesn’t only present obstacles; it also presents opportunities for improving customer loyalty. “My whole journey has been around using new technology and more data to better connect with people,” David says.

With the emergence of streaming platforms, discerning the whereabouts of your customers has evolved to critical importance. Meanwhile, the scarcity of time remains constant. In an era inundated with choice, it has become paramount to track where customers spend their finite hours.

"There's a lot of new technology, there's a lot of new streaming apps,” David says. “There aren't a lot of new people. So, you need to make sure you're including the right people to follow the demographics.”

These swift alterations in consumer demographics thrust businesses such as Nielsen into explaining novel data and analytics to their long-standing customers. David affirms that aiding these companies that previously relied on Nielsen's traditional metrics to grasp the numerical shift has been a complex voyage.

“The challenge is when it seems there has been a big change and people don't understand how that could have been a change because their product still is pretty much the same,” David says. “And, of course, the change is because the consumers found new streaming platforms.”

Amid conversations around this evolving media landscape, David accentuates the necessity for transparency with clients. “As we continue to innovate with new methods, we need to do that in a very transparent way so there can be trust and respect as the methods evolve,” he says. For David, the preservation of customer trust is the cornerstone for maintaining and establishing relationships.

In this episode, David shares the influence of streaming on Nielsen’s business, elucidates how they are adapting to confront new challenges, and discusses how strategic innovation can promote customer trust.

In the following excerpt, we discuss measuring trust among your customer base.

Rob: What do you use as the evidence of the trust that you're earning from your customers? Because I get the evidence of the quality of the panels and the, and the data.

David: You could certainly survey, and we do survey on trust. But the other way we know trust is how we're used in decisions, right? What are they actually using to plan? What are they actually using to invest in content?

There are other companies who manage the transactions, and we know where Nielsen is in all of that.  We track that very closely. I measure trust by what they say, but I also measure it by what they do.

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