Home Ad Exchange News Nielsen’s Position Is Threatened; Facebook Admits To More Measurement Miscalculations

Nielsen’s Position Is Threatened; Facebook Admits To More Measurement Miscalculations

SHARE:

competitioninthedistanceHere’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Nielsen’s House

Nielsen is trying. It had an acquisitive 2016, snapping up Repucom, Informate Mobile and Pointlogic, and Variety has reported “advanced talks” for Gracenote’s content recognition tech. But the pressure won’t relent, as Google, marketing clouds, holding companies and a few dozen digital metrics startups all squeeze through the door Nielsen used to call its own. But after a cheerless investor day, several analysts including Pivotal’s Brian Wieser and BMO’s Dan Salmon lowered their expectations for the company’s stock.

Oh, Facebook

Facebook revealed another set of measurement miscalculations this time around audience estimates and Live video reactions. The platform will update its audience estimation tool to better gauge an ad’s overall reach. These miscalculations don’t involve metrics used to bill advertisers, The New York Times reports, but Facebook’s transparency around them signals pressure (and perhaps willingness) to open up a bit. “We know how important it is to be open about meaningful updates we make to our metrics,” Facebook said in a blog post. More at TechCrunch.

Welcome To The Family

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella formally welcomed LinkedIn to the family in a blog post … on LinkedIn. Read it. He outlines a road map for integration, including extending LinkedIn sponsored content across Microsoft properties, developing a business news desk across Microsoft’s content ecosystem and combining social selling through Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365. Top of mind is growing LinkedIn and beefing up Microsoft’s capabilities as a B2B network. “Microsoft – inclusive of LinkedIn – can take steps to help people develop new skills online, find new jobs and easily connect and collaborate with colleagues,” he writes.

Header Holdouts

Publishers have not universally converted to header bidding. Anthony Hitchings, director ad operations for the Financial Times, says his company isn’t the ideal fit for header bidding since it relies more on its print biz and branded content revenue. But he isn’t alone. “We do not believe that the use of multiple tags in the page’s header adds any value to the user experience for our global audience,” according to David Goddard, global head of programmatic trading for BBC Advertising. More at Digiday.

But Wait, There’s More!

You’re Hired!

Must Read

For Super Bowl First-Timers Manscaped And Ro, Performance Means Changing Perception

For Manscaped and Ro, the Big Game is about more than just flash and exposure. It’s about shifting how audiences perceive their brands.

Alphabet Can Outgrow Everything Else, But Can It Outgrow Ads?

Describing Google’s revenue growth has become a problem, it so vastly outpaces the human capacity to understand large numbers and percentage growth rates. The company earned more than $113 billion in Q4 2025, and more than $400 billion in the past year.

BBC Studios Benchmarks Its Podcasts To See How They Really Stack Up

Triton Digital’s new tool lets publishers see how their audience size compares to other podcasts at the show and episode level.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Comic: Traffic Jam

People Inc. Says Who Needs Google?

People Inc. is offsetting a 50% decline in Google search traffic through off-platform growth and its highest digital revenue gains in five quarters.

The MRC Wants Ad Tech To Get Honest About How Auctions Really Work

The MRC’s auction transparency standards aren’t intended to force every programmatic platform to use the same auction playbook – but platforms do have to adopt some controversial OpenRTB specs to get certified.

A TV remote framed by dollar bills and loose change

Resellers Crackdowns Are A Good Thing, Right? Well, Maybe Not For Indie CTV Publishers

SSPs have mostly either applauded or downplayed the recent crackdown on CTV resellers, but smaller publishers see it as another revenue squeeze.