Nielsen and TikTok say they’ve struck a first-of-its-kind deal for ad metrics. Is it really that groundbreaking?

Brands running ads on TikTok will now get official Nielsen performance data thanks to a new partnership—but will that data be enough to solve cross-platform measurement challenges?

As the creator economy has boomed to become a $250 billion business, we’ve seen more marketing than ever appear on digital platforms like TikTok and YouTube. These ads are often part of broader multimedia campaigns that splash marketing across linear TV and multiple digital platforms at once. Linear TV has long-established, standardized means of measuring how much reach ads garner with audiences (speaking of Nielsen…), but getting performance data from digital platforms—and, crucially, figuring out how to compare different platforms’ versions of engagement metrics—can be more difficult.

With that in mind, TikTok’s new partnership with Nielsen aims to “unlock a cross-media view of ad campaign performance” that “provides a holistic view of campaign performance across publishers and platforms, and for the first time, enables cross-media measurement so that advertisers and agencies can compare ad performance on TikTok across all screens, including digital, CTV, and linear,” Nielsen said in a press release.

The partnership uses Nielsen ONE, Nielsen’s program that tracks users across multiple devices and platforms and provides deduplicated audience engagement data. It also uses clean room technology.

“Clean room” sounds like something out of Dexter, but in ad tech, it means a digital space where companies like TikTok, Google, and Meta (usually referred to as “walled gardens”) will privately share internal performance data with advertisers, who can then compare their own performance data and see if the numbers match. It’s called a “clean room” because none of the companies’ data leaves that space; all that’s taken away are advertisers’ conclusions about how their campaigns did on those platforms.

“Amidst a fragmented ecosystem, advertisers are increasingly challenged to understand and substantiate the incremental value of each element of their media plan,” Ameneh Atai, Nielsen’s General Manager of Audience Measurement, said in a statement. “Integrating TikTok into Nielsen ONE unlocks a significant piece of the puzzle, providing much-needed clarity and ultimately helping advertisers make the most informed decisions as they plan and measure their cross platform and publisher campaigns.”

As eMarketer points out, advertisers being able to directly compare TikTok performance data from Nielsen to TV performance data from Nielsen could be a benefit, because a recent analysis from iSpot

showed that on average, 58% of TikTok ad impressions were generated by users who hadn’t seen TV versions of the campaigns.

Nielsen also has measurement partnerships with other video-focused platforms like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and Roku, but not with social-first TikTok competitors like Instagram and Snapchat. (Though it’s worth noting all major social media platforms–including YouTube—have their own ad creation/buying platforms that provide some performance metrics.)

eMarketer theorizes that this partnership “helps validate TikTok’s evolution into a mainstream advertising platform, bringing its measurement capabilities in line with established players.”

But not everyone is convinced the Nielsen x TikTok team-up is groundbreaking. Zach Servideo, CEO of consulting firm Value Creation Labs, tells Tubefilter he doesn’t see “how this data integration alone solves the cross-platform measurement challenge brands face.”

“The Nielsen and TikTok integration is a necessary box to check, and one that is table stakes when working with advertisers, but it also leaves a lot to be desired for marketers looking for truly holistic cross-platform campaign measurement,” he says. “It also sounds a lot like many of the cross-platform measurement promises of the 2010s. And let’s be real, there were companies like Delmondo and Tubular Labs doing exactly this–piping in data from walled gardens and giving a holistic multi-platform measurement view. This Nielsen and TikTok partnership fails to put into perspective how other walled gardens such as Meta, Netflix, and Google fit in.”

Servideo also thinks Nielsen and TikTok should get more specific about how their clean room will work. “I’d encourage advertisers to ask Nielsen and TikTok how the clean room tech works because not all clean rooms are created equally,” he said. “There are companies like Symitri bringing real-time clean rooms to the open Internet to compete with walled gardens. For some advertisers, they’re actually doing a better job on the open Internet of audience data matching and performance, which in turn leads to better cross-platform measurement.”

For now, we’ll have to wait to see what advertisers think of Nielsen’s new TikTok measurements. That is, assuming TikTok sticks around in the U.S. long enough for brands to use them.