Nielsen announced the launch of Nielsen Media Data Room (MDR), a cloud-based platform that will modernize how the company distributes its vast amount of audience data.

As census first-party data from clients becomes more important in measurement, this significant innovation will provide the industry with the means to access and share large data sets in an efficient and privacy-safe manner.

Nielsen’s MDR will be launched in collaboration with Snowflake, which will provide the underlying platform.

The first data set made available as part of this initial implementation will be Nielsen Respondent Level Data (NRLD), which is a modeled, representative subsample of 35 million homes for U.S. National linear television.

Clients will have easy access to NRLD and will be able to query the data for near real-time insights.

Nielsen will bring a familiar technology platform that is already embedded in many client workflows by leveraging Snowflake.

This will allow for the efficient and governed deployment of Nielsen Media Data Room, as well as the reduction of setup time for existing Snowflake clients and the ability for clients to join Nielsen and their first-party datasets more easily in the future.

Nielsen is ensuring the availability of its data in the media ecosystem in a variety of ways, including MDR. While Nielsen will continue to improve data delivery through APIs and industry workflows that power the industry’s buying and posting systems, as well as in Nielsen ONE, MDR will eventually replace all previous forms of data distribution, including FTP and custom Nielsen applications.

“Nielsen has always been a company that leads the way in how it uses data in powerful ways on behalf of our customers,” said Srini Varadarajan, Chief Technology Officer for Audience Measurement. Another example of how we innovate to serve the complex needs of the media ecosystem is the modernization of our data architecture in service of delivering analytics to customers in a highly customizable, secure, and reliable cloud-based environment.”

Nielsen MDR highlights the evolution and modernization of Nielsen’s data architecture, which sits atop Nielsen’s Media Data Lake – the cloud-based repository that houses all of the company’s data used for the audience measurement.

Nielsen MDR is the first phase of the company’s data modernization strategy, and it will eventually be powered by Snowflake’s data clean room technology, providing a platform for companies to perform data collaboration and analysis with respondent-level data from all households.

Bill Stratton, Global Head of Media, Entertainment, and Advertising, at Snowflake, said, “In today’s media ecosystem, advertisers, agencies, and media companies all need data collaboration and accessibility in near real-time, all wrapped in a privacy-preserving technology. In joining Snowflake’s Media Data Cloud, Nielsen will be delivering the next generation of data products for their clients.”

Nielsen’s progress towards building a technology ecosystem that meets customers’ needs for privacy, speed, reliability, and effectiveness speaks to the significant investment Nielsen has made in recent years alongside the development and launch of its Nielsen ONE platform.

Nielsen MDR will play a significant role in the company’s preparation to transition to Big Data+Panel National TV measurement and ultimately support the industry’s transition to Individual Commercial Metrics.