Nielsen

“For any version of Nielsen, current as-is or next after-sale, the ad industry needs are identical: deep disclosures and real transparency, commitment to the modernization that sharply increased competition demands, and increased collaboration rather than collision with their clients and customers,” says Sean Cunningham, president and CEO of the Video Advertising Bureau, a trade group that represents the TV networks to the advertising industry. “We are rooting hard for these overdue outcomes from any version of Nielsen.”

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp talks with Vikrant Mathur of Future Today, Pierre Marc-Diennet of Lotame and Mark Zagorski of DoubleVerify about Nielsen’s $16 billion sale to a private equity consortium and what it means for the company’s future and the broader landscape of TV measurement.

TV ratings giant Nielsen is to be acquired by private equity consortium Evergreen Coast Capital Corp. and Brookfield Business Partners in a deal valued at around $16 billion. The Nielsen board of directors voted unanimously to support the acquisition proposal, which represents a 10% premium over the consortium’s previous proposal and a 60% premium over Nielsen’s unaffected stock price.

As the audience for traditional television has gotten older, broadcast and cable sales and research executives have argued that Madison Avenue’s fixation on younger viewers is costing them money by devaluing the majority of their audiences. They also argue that by ignoring mature viewers, marketers are ignoring consumers with wealth and purchasing power. In a guest blog  Monday, Nielsen VP Sue Tremblay argues that including people 55 to 64 would incorporate half of the Baby Boomer generation and all Gen Xers.

The Media Rating Council said that Nielsen’s bid to get its national and local ratings services reaccredited won’t be completed until the third quarter at the earliest, and after the upfront TV ad market takes place.

NBCUniversal says iSpot.tv will be this upfront ad market’s cross-platform “currency” partner for marketers for the 2022-23 TV season. NBC has added eight other certifications, beyond the previously announced iSpot.tv. It has also added seven new “certified” measurement partners. “As we head into the upfront season, we wanted to make it clear that, at this moment in time, we will be transacting against our certified cross-platform partner, iSpot.tv,” Kelly Abcarian, EVP of measurement & impact, advertising and partnerships, NBCUniversal, said Tuesday.

Nielsen Holding said its board rejected an offer from a consortium of private equity investors worth $25.40 a share. The company also said that one of its large shareholders, WindAcre Partnership,  said it would acquire a large enough position in NIelsen equity to block the takeover bid.

Despite the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, and the heightened demand for news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine late in the month, February’s TV viewership trailed January’s per usual, according to Nielsen’s latest update of The Gauge, its monthly look at how consumers are watching content across top TV platforms.

TV networks are bullish on using alternatives to Nielsen panel data as currencies for deals in the upcoming spring ad haggle. But despite Nielsen’s widely reported issues and new alliances forging between media sellers and measurement firms, it’s unlikely 2022 will be the year the TV industry shifts en masse away from Nielsen.

The suit charges the ratings firm with fraud and concealment and alleges media companies have suffered billions of dollars in damages.

A consortium of private-equity firms including Elliott Management Corp. is in advanced talks to buy the TV ratings company for about $15 billion including debt, according to people familiar with the matter. Financing talks with a number of banks are progressing and a takeover deal could be completed within weeks, the people said. There is no guarantee there will be a deal, as the talks could still fall apart.

Nielsen has sued potential rival TVSquared, alleging that TVSquared infringed on a Nielsen patent covering measuring audience exposure across platforms while protecting viewers’ personal information. TVSquared was acquired last weekfor about $160 million by Innovid,

Nielsen said it is examining its operations in Russia at a time when several media companies have elected to shut down their activities there. “Due to the escalating situation in Russia and Ukraine, Nielsen is actively working with its clients and vendors in Russia to pause new business and evaluating a plan for its existing operations in Russia,” the company said in a statement. Nielsen declined to elaborate on whether it was measuring Russia’s state-run media.

The networks are once again publicly taking Nielsen to task for what they allege is flawed data from the measurement company. This time, the Video Advertising Bureau is asking Nielsen to delay its new “big data” monthly impact releases — set-top box and smart television viewership metrics that complement its in-house panel data for national TV measurement — until after this year’s upfront, calling the current data “unusable.”

Cox will have access to a broad range of Nielsen services, including Scarborough, Arianna, Local Media Impact, and more.

Don’t count Nielsen out of TV’s measurement wars just yet. Disney said Tuesday that it had entered into an agreement with Publicis Media to test work on Nielsen’s new NielsenOne system, a measurement product that aims to count unduplicated video audiences across linear and digital screens and that Nielsen expects to introduce formally later this year.

The National Football League and Nielsen said that a new study they collaborated on estimates that more than 208 million people watched the 2022 Super Bowl, a number 25% higher than the 167 million unique viewers who watched at least one minute of the game based on Nielsen’s previous report.

Nielsen, under fire from media companies and a raft of competitors, said its new measurement system Nielsen One is on track, with the rollout of some parts being accelerated. “We are executing as planned, as committed on Nielsen One,” said Nielsen CEO David Kenny Monday during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

NBCU provided advertising data from the Olympics and Super Bowl and Nielsen integrated broadband-only homes into a local universe sample in a month that marked a turning point in the fraught universe of TV metrics. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp, Paige Albiniak and Michael Stahl discuss an eventful February for TV measurement with Nielsen’s introduction of BBO homes and NBCUniversal’s granular new metrics with iSpot.tv, plus how newsrooms’ assignment desks are weaning off police scanners and toward a more collaborative role.

The media measurement giant is expected as soon as Wednesday to announce it will issue streaming data from connected TV sets, according to two people familiar with the matter. The information, Nielsen is expected to tell clients, will give advertisers, media buyers and media companies more information in their efforts to understand how audiences are behaving across a range of different screens.

While TV measurement moves to big data sets, panels remain crucial as lawsuits and widely varying claims roil the industry.

Nielsen calls discussion “premature” on its Nielsen One next-generation cross-platform service, and the value of overnights is questionable, but NBCU is touting iSpot Olympics data daily.

Nielsen said it has launched a Diverse Media Equity Program, which is designed to highlight minority-owned media companies to advertisers and media buyers. Canela Media, a Latina-owned media company, was part of a pilot initiative and the number of campaigns it had that were measured by Nielsen tripled.

Nielsen is launching a Diverse Media Equity program to help bridge measurement and other structural gaps that have excluded minority-owned media companies from receiving their fair share of ad spend. The effort includes a new report quantifying reach and impact of diverse-owned media outlets and expanding access for minority-owned radio stations to Nielsen data, even if they can’t pay for subscriptions.

Roku claims its OneView is the first ad-buying platform to enable Nielsen guarantees across TV streaming platforms. Upfront advertisers in OneView will now have the ability to see and measure audiences across major devices, channels, and publishers and can choose a specific age and gender demographic and pay only for the ad impressions that reach their target audience.

TV’s very currency is in crisis, fueled by deepening questions of Nielsen’s accuracy. As the industry shifts its focus toward attribution, the company needs to pull itself out of its insular shell if it wants to create the future advertising currency and secure its own future.

The characterization of the Media Rating Council’s analysis of Nielsen’s pandemic-affected undercounting of linear TV viewers by the VAB, the national TV ad trade group, isn’t a correct “representation,” according to the MRC.

The VAB today (Jan. 26) issued a report saying that Nielsen’s error in not counting some out-of-home viewing was a much bigger deal than the ratings firm let on and resulted in billions of impressions not being registered and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of TV ads unsold.

The research company admits that Don’t Look Up was “not fully credited” in its Christmas week rankings.

Sports betting will continue its meteoric rise in spot TV, Nielsen’s measurement footing will remain shaky and NextGen TV may finally deliver on new revenue streams for broadcasters in another challenging year ahead.

Comscore, a longtime rival to Nielsen in the business of measuring media audiences, is vowing to keep pace as advertisers seek new ways of counting viewers who watch their favorite shows in a dizzying array of new formats. Comscore said it would launch “Comscore Everywhere,” a measurement product that aims to count unduplicated audiences across various media and screens. The company, which expects to add new phases to the product throughout 2022, does so as Nielsen is working on a similar initiative, all part of a large-scale move by the media and advertising industries to use new technology to tabulate audience is more precise fashion and with more discrete methods.

The watchdog group urges Nielsen to investigate concerns over accuracy before moving forward with plans to add data from broadband-only homes to its local TV market measurement in January.

Wendy McMahon, president and co-head of ViacomCBS’s CBS News and Stations unit, has sent a letter to Nielsen objecting to the audience measurement firm’s plan to include broadband-only homes in its local ratings. The complaint adds to a chorus of criticism for Nielsen, which is already under fire for undercounting viewers and under pressure from an industry that is accelerating the search for alternatives to Nielsen, which has long dominated the ratings business.

Nielsen began including out-of-home viewers in its national ratings in September 2020 — but apparently not all of them. The TV ratings provider has told clients it has undercounted some OOH viewers for that entire time. The company, which has come under intense criticism from networks and ad buyers over possible undercounting of viewers during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, says a software issue is to blame for the problem.