Nielsen N-Score Links Celebs to What Fans Buy

Nielsen said it is linking its N-Score, which looks at the appeal celebrities have with their fans, to those fans’ viewing and shopping behavior.

The new service should provide new data for programmers doing casting and for marketers making endorsement and advertising plans.

"Finding the right celebrity drives impactful results for ALL parties in the casting, advertising and programming ecosystem,” said Michele Orlick, senior VP, client consulting, Nielsen. “Nielsen's enhanced N-Score capabilities can now provide quantifiable and actionable insights in order to better understand a celebrity's fan base, helping to give content producers and advertisers the ability to make informed talent and endorsement choices as well as program placement and ad sales decisions."

Nielsen said it is integrating its media and consumer panels—including Scarborough, Homescan and its TV panel with N-Score values—in order to allow decision makers to evaluate and select talent in a data-driven way. N-Score values are calculated using a proprietary algorithm which considers a multitude of celebrity characteristics. The Nielsen Fan Affinity score ranks celebrities based on how likely their fans are to watch certain content, exhibit consumer behaviors or have lifestyle preferences.

Nielsen’s N-Score competes with the Q-Score from Marketing Evaluations, which measure the familiarity and appeal of celebrities.

"In today's media environment context continues to be paramount and being able to leverage Nielsen's N-Score to find talent that is specific to our programming, and especially our high-quality brand, is absolutely essential,” said Jess Aguirre, senior VP of media research and consumer insights at Crown Media Networks.

“N-Score's fan affinity behaviors also serve to help us align with national advertisers who want their messages to benefit by the halo effect provided by the Hallmark brand. To quote an industry executive, 'brands are like people, they are judged by the company they keep,'" Aguirre said.

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.