General Terms

Designated Market Area

Geographic regions defined by Nielsen that represent specific television markets where the population receives similar TV, radio, and media content.

Definition

A Designated Market Area (DMA) is a geographic region, defined by Nielsen, that represents a group of counties that form an exclusive geographic area where the home market TV stations hold a dominance of total hours viewed. DMAs are essential for media planning, advertising targeting, and market analysis as they help define discrete market areas for broadcast and cable television, radio, print, and digital advertising distribution.

Examples

New York DMA covering parts of NY, NJ, and CT

Los Angeles DMA including surrounding counties

Chicago DMA encompassing multiple media markets

Regional broadcast advertising campaigns targeting specific DMAs

Best Practices

  • ✓Consider DMA size and rankings for budget allocation
  • ✓Analyze demographic data within DMAs
  • ✓Coordinate media buys across DMA boundaries
  • ✓Track performance metrics by DMA
  • ✓Adjust targeting based on DMA-specific response rates

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about Designated Market Area, answered.

What is a designated market area (DMA)?
A designated market area is a geographic region — defined by Nielsen in the US — that groups counties into a single media market based on which local TV stations and media they receive. There are 210 DMAs in the US, ranging from large metros to small rural markets. DMAs are the standard unit for buying and measuring local and regional media, especially TV.
How are DMAs used in advertising?
For geographic targeting and measurement of media buys, particularly TV and radio but also digital and OTT. Advertisers use DMAs to concentrate spend on specific markets (e.g. testing in select DMAs, supporting regional rollouts, or matching ad spend to store locations), to compare performance across markets, and to plan reach within defined media regions. They provide a consistent geographic framework for local media.
Why are DMAs useful for media planning?
Because they align with how media is actually distributed and consumed regionally, giving a standard, comparable unit for allocating and measuring local/regional spend. Planners can target high-priority markets, run geo-based tests (advertise in some DMAs, hold out others to measure lift), and coordinate national and local efforts. The standardization makes cross-market comparison and incrementality testing by geography practical.
Are DMAs still relevant in digital advertising?
Yes, though less central than in TV. Digital platforms allow far more granular geo-targeting (city, ZIP, radius), but DMAs remain useful as a standard regional unit — for geo-based incrementality experiments, aligning digital with TV/OTT buys, regional rollouts, and comparing markets consistently. They're a common framework for geo-holdout testing, which has gained importance as a privacy-safe way to measure incrementality.
How do DMAs support geo-based measurement?
By providing discrete, comparable regions you can treat as test and control groups. A common technique is a geo-holdout: run advertising in some DMAs and withhold it in comparable ones, then compare outcomes to estimate the true incremental lift the advertising caused. Because DMAs are standardized, well-defined regions, they're well suited to this kind of privacy-safe, market-level incrementality testing.

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