Nielsen DCR Destination

Nielsen-DCR is supported on mobile apps and web browsers.

Digital Content Ratings (DCR) responds to the shifting, complex multi-platform, multi-device and multi-distribution landscape by providing comprehensive measurement of digital content consumption—including streaming video, static web pages and mobile apps—across all major devices and platforms.

In order to get started with Nielsen-DCR and retrieve an appid to configure this integration, you must sign a license agreement on the Nielsen engineering portal.

There will be an NDA to sign prior to accessing the download. Nielsen requires you fill out your company info and have a Nielsen representative before getting started.

You must also go through a pre-certification process with your Nielsen representative before shipping this implementation to production.

To get started with Nielsen-DCR and Segment, you'll want to first integrate your mobile app with our iOS or Android sources.

To install Nielsen DCR via Segment on iOS, please follow the instructions in the Segment-Nielsen-DCR repository README.

To install Nielsen DCR via Segment on Android, please follow the instructions in the Segment-Nielsen-DCR repository README.

If you'd like to measure video on the web, all you have to do is add your App ID in your Segment settings and enable this destination for a JS source. We will load the Nielsen SDK onto your browser.

Segment supports translating screen or page to Nielsen as a Static App Measurement event. We will translate the following properties to the expected Nielsen metadata:

* On web and mobile, you can map a custom property to section using the Custom Page/Screen Section Property Name setting. If this setting is left blank, Segment will fallback on the top-level name.

Segment only supports sending track events as outlined in our Video Spec. To get started tracking video content through Segment, make sure you are using a media player that has an API which allows you to detect the player state such as video or ad plays. For example, you would not be able to collect ad plays using YouTube since their YouTube SDK does not expose any hooks into player states during ad plays.

IMPORTANT: If you do not implement the Segment Video Spec properly with key lifecycle events, this integration will not behave properly.

Again, also refer to our Video Spec and implement video tracking as outlined there. We will map the semantic events and properties to Nielsen's relevant methods and metadata.

Nielsen expects a heartbeat called with playheadPosition during session play every second until the stream is completed, paused or interrupted (due to ad breaks or buffering). The playhead position is the current location in seconds of the playhead from the beginning of the asset. For livestream, Segment expects a negative integer that represents the offset in seconds in relation to the current timestamp. For example, if content is being livestreamed at 8PM but the viewer is 30 seconds behind, the value of this property should be -30. You can override this and pass the current time in seconds to Nielsen by toggling the Enable Default to Current Time for Livestream Playhead Position setting.

Segment will set a timer to call this heartbeat event (–(void) playheadPosition: (long long) playheadPos), setTimeout (web)) every second in background. You do NOT have to call the Segment equivalent heartbeat event (Video Content/Ad Playing) each second. You should follow our spec and call the Segment heartbeat event every 10 seconds (recommended). While we will keep state of our own playhead position for these background hearbeats, when we do receive an explicit Segment heartbeat event, we will respect its properties.position and restart the background heartbeats from that position.

When you call Video Playback Started and Video Playback Resumed, Segment will call the Nielsen-DCR play method with the relevant channelInfo:

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NSDictionary *channelInfo = @{
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                                      // channelName is optional for DCR, if not present Nielsen asks to set default
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                                      @"channelName" : options[@"channelName"] ?: @"defaultChannelName",
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                                      // if mediaURL is not available, Nielsen expects an empty value
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                                      @"mediaURL" : options[@"mediaUrl"] ?: @""
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                                      };
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(void) play: (id) channelInfo;
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From there we will map to the relevant events on the instance as outlined below:

Web supports the use case of tracking a user switching back and forth from amongst multiple videos at the same time. To do so, Segment checks the metadata on playback interrupted events and sends Nielsen updated metadata if we see that the video content has changed. We do so by storing the current asset_id in memory and checking to see if the asset_id value has changed.

For playback events, Segment's video spec expects either ad_asset_id​ or content_asset_id​ depending on whether the video is an ad or content. Segment will default to mapping ad_asset_id to Nielsen's ad metadata assetid and content_asset_id to Nielsen's content metadata. The default Segment property can be overridden in your integration settings: Custom Content Asset Id Property Name or Custom Ad Asset Id Property Name.

Content Properties (Labels)

Note that iOS and Android expect different casing. We expect snake_case for iOS and camelCase for Android.

The Segment-Nielsen-DCR integration has logic to check for type in case of a preroll ad. If the type is preroll, Segment calls Nielsen's loadMetadata method with metadata values for content followed by loadMetadata with ad (preroll) metadata. Otherwise, Segment simply calls loadMetadata with the ad metadata.

Note that iOS and Android expect different casing. We expect snake_case for iOS and camelCase for Android.

Example on passing destination specific option values through on iOS

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options:@{
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  @"integrations": @{
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   @"nielsen-dcr" : @{
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     @"pipmode" : @"2017-05-22",
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     @"adLoadType": @"c3 value",
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     @"channelName: @"c4 value",
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     @"mediaUrl" : @"c6 value",
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     @"hasAds":  @"true",
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     @"crossId1": @"cross id1 value",
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     @"crossId2": @"cross id2 value"
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    }
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  }
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}

Example for Android:

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Map<String, Object> nielsenOptions = new LinkedHashMap<>();
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nielsenOptions.put("pipmode", "c3 value");
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nielsenOptions.put("adLoadType", "c4 value");
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nielsenOptions.put("channelName", "c6 value");
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nielsenOptions.put("mediaUrl", "c6 value");
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nielsenOptions.put("hasAds", "true");
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nielsenOptions.put("crossId1", "cross id1 value");
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nielsenOptions.put("crossId2", "cross id2 value");
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Analytics.with(context).track("Video Playback Started", new Properties(), new Options().setIntegrationOptions("nielsen-dcr", nielsenOptions));
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Current state of picture-in-picture (PIP) mode on device. Pass in true if the video measurement is displayed in PIP mode. Otherwise, Segment defaults to false if no value is present.

Type of ad load. Pass in dynamic to indicate Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI). Otherwise, Segment defaults to linear.

The SDK is started by calling the play API with the channelName and mediaURL parameters. If no value is passed in, Segment defaults to defaultChannelName for channelName and an empty String for mediaURL.

Standard episode ID.

Content originator ID. This value is only required for distributors.

Segment-Nielsen-DCR iOS retrieves the application name from your app's Info.plist application bundle name as returned by CFBundleName .

For Android, we retrieve the name of the application package from the PackageManager.

Segment-Nielsen-DCR retrieves the application version from your app's Info.plist application bundle name as returned by CFBundleVersion.

For Android, we retrieve the version of the application package from the PackageManager.

The Parent Client ID and Sub-Brand (VCID) values are automatically populated through the AppID, which is Nielsen Supplied. By default, clientid and subbrand are set up in Nielsen backend configuration to capture brand and sub-brand information. The fields get populated from backend for a registered client appid.

In the event that your app contains multiple brands and sub-brands, Segment lets you override the clientId and subbrand values, to give credit to another brand or sub-brand. In your Segment dashboard, under "Client Id Property Name", indicate a payload property to be mapped to the Nielsen clientId. To override a subbrand, indicate a payload property to mapped to Nielsen subbrand under "Subbrand Property Name".

Segment lets you change these destination settings from the Segment app without having to touch any code.