A recent decision by a little-known industry oversight group could end up having a sizable impact on TV ratings and the ad business that relies on them.

The Media Rating Council, which accredits audience measurement models from such companies as Nielsen, Comscore and VideoAmp, gave a thumbs-up to Nielsens plan to incorporate first-party data from streaming outlets into its national TV ratings panel. The panel plus big data measurement has the potential at least for live events to show that a noticeably higher number of people are watching a given program than the panel-only measure. The sample size for panel plus big data measurement, it needs to be noted, is exceedingly small at the moment: The only Nielsen client using the new measurement so far is Amazon, and then only for Prime Videos Thursday Night Football telecasts.

Still, what data there is shows a good-sized boost with the addition of Amazons streaming data. Nielsens panel-only figures have Thursday Night Football at 13.2million viewers per game this season; the big data addition pushes the audience up to 14.26million, a gain of more than a million viewers (about8percent).

That increase tracks with (again, limited) multiplatform data from other outlets that occasionally report combined TV and streaming numbers for live events. NBCs Sunday Night Football is averaging about 18.9million TV viewers this season; with streaming on Peacock and other digital platforms (as measured by Adobe Analytics), those games rise to 21.3million, a gain of about 13 percent.

Fox, ESPN and CBS also have noted streaming boosts for live sports,although not as regularly (CBS also is in a contract dispute with Nielsen at the moment and not using the lattersratingsproduct).

Nielsen is in talks with some other clients to use the panel plus big data measurement for live events. What it wont do, however, is show supplemental same-day viewing for most regular programming an episode of, say, Chicago Fire doesnt stream on Peacock concurrently with its NBC broadcast the way that Sunday Night Football does.

But with live telecasts among the most reliable audience draws on TV (and, in the case of Thursday Night Football, streaming), the new tool could help networks and streamers make the case to advertisers that an even bigger audience is out there.