Nielsen said that the enhanced Nielsen Identity System would allow more accurate digital advertising measurement, and connect digital impressions to the demographics of people across billions of devices.

The company added that the system would work by combining Nielsen assets with third-party data sets calibrated against truth sets.

Nielsen Identity System will be rolled out in the UK, Italy and France on 1st February 2022, followed by Japan, Australia, India and Germany on April 1st; Spain, Brazil, Indonesia and Canada on 1st May; and Singapore, Mexico, Thailand, and Hong Kong on 1st June.

Other markets will be included in monthly roll outs from July 2022.

The changes are part of Nielsen’s preparation for the eradication of third-party cookies, which are due to be phased out in 2023 by Google, following similar decisions by other major browsers.

Nielsen is also planning to release its cross-platform measurement tool Nielsen One next year, with plans to fully move to cross-media metrics by autumn 2024.

Sarah Miller, senior vice-president, product management at Nielsen, said: “With this enhancement to our Identity System we are taking another step to assure the longevity of ad measurement amid the rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.

“Because of Nielsen’s unique data assets, we are not only able to adjust and correct licensed third-party user registration data using panels, we have also developed sophisticated machine learning algorithms to cluster digital IDs into people and correct for any possible imbalances from the market’s universe of users.”