TV networks see historic ratings drops under Nielsen Big Data + Panel, VAB reports

Ratings across 158 TV networks are down this year by an average of 18% to 30% under Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement, the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) told The Current.

The declines in the highly prized 25 to 54 demographic — now at levels not seen in 23 years when compared with panel-only measurement — break down three ways: an 18% drop overall, a 23% decline for cable networks and 30% plunge when news and sports programming are excluded.

VAB President Sean Cunningham said the organization began uncovering these issues in late October after digging into the data. He added that Big Data + Panel shows unusually high variance, overreporting or underreporting ratings by roughly 20%. Some networks, he said, are experiencing statistical aberrations across as much as 60% of all viewing hours.

This misreporting — especially for the valuable 25 to 54 demo — has major implications for both buy and sell sides. Incomplete, unstable measurement suppresses CPMs for publishers, draining ad revenue for the already shrinking traditional TV ecosystem. On the buy side, agencies struggle to plan, forecast or trust audience guarantees.

“There is an enormous structural defect sitting in the trading currency where the 25 to 54 demographic has been systemically crushed by all of the biases inside of the way Nielsen’s calculating Big Data + Panel,” Cunningham told The Current.

Nielsen declined to comment on this story, as did all five TV networks contacted by The Current.

Cunningham said the VAB stepped in only after publishers exhausted all options trying to work with Nielsen, efforts that led to frustration over what he described as “layer upon layer of voodoo math” embedded in Nielsen’s methodology.

He believes Nielsen is weighing its 43,000-person panel too heavily, allowing it to dominate signals compared to its 45 million big data sources. He argues this leads to an oversaturation of viewers aged 55 and over in the reported ratings.

“What I’ve heard is a lot of small cable networks are getting killed in the new data,” an industry veteran embedded in measurement told The Current.

Nielsen fields monopoly pressure

To benchmark Nielsen’s ratings, the VAB conducted blind tests using measurement data from VideoAmp and Comscore.

For cable, ratings were 67% higher than Nielsen’s in 2025, with the two measurement challengers’ average audience within 1.8% of each other. For broadcast-only measurement, ratings were a staggering 158% higher, though the two challengers differed by 18%. When combining broadcast and cable, ratings were 109% higher than Nielsen, with a 9% variance between the two competitors.

In every case, Nielsen was the outlier.

Blind testing was necessary because Nielsen prohibits publishers and agencies from comparing Nielsen data side –by side with other measurement providers under its master service agreement. In November, TVision filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing Nielsen of operating a monopoly.

Cunningham believes these tensions will drive major changes in next year’s upfronts. Agencies and TV networks have slowly experimented with alternative currencies like VideoAmp, which cleared $3 billion in upfront deals in 2024 and 2025. Still, that number is a very small share of what Nielsen pulls in.

“You’ll see more change in place for the [2026] upfronts than came in the two or three decades before,” Cunningham said. “It’s coming fast.”

Summer drama on the Croisette

In June, during Cannes Lions, executives from TV networks, agency holding companies and the VAB met with Nielsen to raise concerns about measurement. Multiple sources told The Current that Nielsen promised to straighten out any issues going forward.

Despite the criticism, Nielsen still controls an estimated 80% to 90% of the national TV currency market. In July, it renewed multiyear Big Data + Panel measurement and currency deals with seven major agencies, including the six big holding companies. A Nielsen spokesperson previously confirmed that a global advertiser did the same.

But pressure is mounting: Just before the NFL season started, the league accused Nielsen of undercounting millions of viewers. All of the major professional leagues in the U.S. — the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL — are now eyeing new measurement partners.

The long-standing question remains: Will the dam ever break to allow real competition and if so, when?

“We’ve been close to this tension point a number of times,” Cunningham said. “And my point is it can’t not break over the next few months.”

In many ways, Nielsen’s panel measurement, which was largely unchanged for decades, holds perfect symmetry with lack of institutional change from publishers and agencies.

“You have an industry stuck in inertia,” a senior industry expert told The Current. “It is anchored to legacy workflows, pricing and procurement models. As a result, no one wants to move to other currencies or transact on advanced audiences at scale, because there is no clear or trusted pricing benchmark.”

Erasing television

Cunningham and the senior expert both describe this as an existential moment for many cable networks, another pain point in the long erosion caused by cord-cutting.

“There are many publishers who need a second truth set [but] are being asked by the legacy provider to not only continue to pay ultra-exorbitant rates for their service, [the one] that’s going to put them out of business,” Cunningham said. “You can’t have 20 to 35% annual losses and expect to be in business 12 quarters later.”

“This new methodology is effectively erasing television,” the senior expert added. “We are seeing significant declines in a 25 to 54 delivery that, if left unaddressed, threaten the economic sustainability of many cable networks.”