As crucial field agents servicing Nielsen’s TV panel stopped entering homes during the now year-long COVID-19 pandemic, the TV advertising trade group VAB says there has been sharp “undercounting of overall TV use.”
“This really should have been avoided,” says Sean Cunningham, president-CEO of the VAB, in a Thursday press conference.
VAB members were pushing Nielsen to have agents return to servicing the TV panel three months after the pandemic began. Cunningham: “TV networks were urging Nielsen to get back into homes to protect the sample in the summer [2020].”
