Content discovery may worsen before it gets better, says Nielsen CTO Anil Goel

New Delhi: India is slated to have more than 20 crore large screens and almost 70 crore small screens by the year 2030. With such staggering numbers, the hunger for content is only going to proliferate. As per the FICCI-EY report, India has over 70 OTT platforms across entertainment, news, audio, and gaming. 

These numbers clearly reflect that the Indian viewers are being bombarded with content across platforms. In such a scenario, content discovery is a challenge that the industry faces but is not fully focused in solving it. 

In a conversation with BestMediaInfo.com, Anil Goel, Chief Technology Officer, Nielsen, flagged content discovery as a critical pain point for the media industry. Despite the personalisation efforts that every platform is making, content discovery is a problem that “may worsen before it gets better.”

“Users are spending north of half an hour trying to decide what to watch on platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Making this choice easier for the users should be a key area of focus for the industry going forward,” Goel said. Goel pointed out that this fatigue of discovering content is one of the primary reasons why FAST channels are gaining traction fast. 

Nielsen, which has now declared itself as a “media-tech company,” is working tirelessly to solve such problems. 

Another issue that Nielsen is vehemently working to solve is the issue of ad frequency capping.

“There is ongoing research in this space, primarily rooted in human psychology rather than technology. While there may not be a single definitive answer, media houses and advertisers alike are continuously studying and refining their understanding of consumer behavior,” Goel said. 

Goel highlighted that Nielsen’s data is playing a key role in research around frequency capping. The measurement arm of Nielsen has reach and frequency at its core, the CTO stated.  

To fuel these research with a robust data stream, Nielsen is betting on the amalgamation of first-party data, third-party data, and the data collected from their reference panels. The reference panel data is collected from more than 10 lakh households that have agreed to be the testbed for new media measurement tech. 

“Our panel provides a reference dataset, typically consisting of over 100,000 households that are demographically representative of the country we're operating in. This foundational panel allows us to understand media consumption at a national level.

However, with the rise of streaming, both audiences and content have become significantly more fragmented. To ensure we're accurately capturing this long-tail consumption, we integrate both first-party and third-party data. For instance, partners like Amazon Prime share data with us—it's in their interest to be measured accurately. 

We also work with third parties, such as cable and DTH providers in India, to access large-scale viewership data. We then marry this big data with our reference panel to create a more comprehensive and accurate view of audience behavior across platforms,” Goel explained. 

Goel revealed that blending big data with reference panel insights is unlocking hidden patterns in audience behavior, hinting at untapped complexities in streaming’s fragmented landscape. As psychological research probes ad frequency limits, and content discovery eludes easy fixes, Nielsen’s partnerships with cable giants and streamers tease a deeper story. Could this data fusion unravel the secrets of viewer fatigue—or spark a media revolution? The answers lie just beyond the horizon, waiting to be measured.