Nielsen Acquires VisualDNA; Consumers Are Unhappy With Samsung OTT Ads

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Buy One, Get One

Nielsen is on a Christmas shopping spree. After acquiring content recognition company Gracenote for $560 million on Tuesday [AdExchanger coverage], it snapped up audience data company VisualDNA on Wednesday. Terms were not disclosed. VisualDNA collects audience data through online personality quizzes and sells it to brands, agencies and publishers. Insights from the UK-based company will bolster Nielsen’s Marketing Cloud. “For Nielsen, the acquisition brings together the UK’s two leading data players into a powerful new union. Additionally, the VisualDNA analytics solution, consumer survey capabilities and data footprint will enhance the Nielsen Marketing Cloud rollout in Europe,” a Nielsen spokesperson told The Drum. More.

Oh-TT No

Samsung rolled out an update to its OTT product that puts banner-like display ads on the home screen, and some consumers ain’t happy. “Free service plus ads or paid service plus no ads – pick one, Samsung,” one viewer wrote on Reddit. “Ads are a large reason why I ditched cable; the viewing experience wasn’t worth the money with one-third of the broadcast time filled with ads.” Although the ads aren’t too intrusive, Stephen Baker, tech analyst at NPD, expressed concern about backlash that Samsung could receive if it continues to roll out the product. “There is a rolling effect to that, and in the longer run, I worry about what the impact to sales would be,” he said. Somewhere in the distance, Adblock Plus is popping champagne. More.

Heard That

It’s a social media company, it’s a video platform, it’s…a radio broadcaster? Facebook is launching a Live audio feature on its site, the company announced in a blog post. “We know that sometimes, publishers want to tell a story on Facebook with words and not video,” the post reads. “Live Audio presents another option for connecting with audiences in real time from low-connectivity areas.” The new feature, which will live within Facebook Live, has the potential to cut into growing podcast budgets by making it possible to virally share audio links like video and text. Facebook is testing the feature with publishers including BBC World Service and HarperCollins, and it will grow the product next year. More at Recode.

Bring It On

Speaking of podcasts, NPR CEO Jarl Mohn is betting on on-demand audio’s success. “The same thing happened during the beginning of the web and people creating blogs – everyone had to have one,” he told The Wall Street Journal. For the CEO of a public radio company, a competitive digital medium might seem scary. But Mohn embraces the challenge. “I’d rather have a smaller percentage of a much, much bigger pie,” he said. “Something that’s really healthy, where 90% of the population is listening to podcasts and we’ve got a great measurement tool,” he said. Apple still stands as a major roadblock to measurement, however. As the largest podcast distributor, it keeps listener data to itself. More.

Programmatic Tea Leaves

Programmatic experts Chris O’Hara (Krux/Salesforce), Emily Macdonald (DigitasLBi) and Tom Wright (Tomorrow TTH) gaze into the crystal ball on a blog post over at Econsultancy. O’Hara puts his cards on AI in programmatic platforms to “make things like user scoring, propensity modeling, lifetime value (LTV) analysis and next-best action recommendations less manual and more automated.” Macdonald expects greater unification of marketing tech stacks from clouds like Oracle and Salesforce. Wright sees programmatic taking over traditional channels like TV, and he calls for advertisers to make their media budgets more fluid. Read it.