Nielsen Is Ready To Release Total Content Ratings; MDC Partners's Revenues Were Up In Q4

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Moar Ratings

After months of delay, Nielsen this week is finally set to roll out its total content ratings (TCR) metric, which promises to measure video consumption and ad impact across linear and digital platforms. TCR will debut Wednesday with a “limited commercial release,” Jessica Hogue, SVP of product leadership at Nielsen, told Adweek. Publishers will be able to share their data externally, and Nielsen will make it available to agencies. While broadcasters hope TCR can help modernize their sales process, digital agencies see the tool as a planning metric at this stage. “It’s a step forward, and any granular measurement beyond what we have now is useful,” said David Cohen, North American president of IPG’s Magna Global. “Is it a currency? It isn’t. Is it going to help from a planning and contextual perspective? Yes, it will.” More.

OTTarget

In other Nielsen news, Nielsen Marketing Cloud will lend its segments to BrightLine’s connected-TV ads. BrightLine works with content providers like Hulu and Viacom on interactive OTT ads. Example: An auto ad could prompt a user to schedule a dealer visit. Until now, BrightLine has relied on device-level data to target specific apps. The Nielsen partnership bolsters that with household data. BrightLine hopes the arrangement will persuade advertisers to wade into the nascent OTT space. But will consumers want to play with ads on television? “There will be a time people will expect that,” said Peter Naylor, SVP of ad sales at Hulu. More at WSJ.

Wild Year

MDC Partners’ Q4 revenues were up 8.8% to $390 million. Rocked by an SEC probe into former CEO Miles Nadal’s expenses, accounting practices and third-party trading, the agency holding group has considered a potential sale or divestiture of assets. In February, Goldman Sachs invested $95 million into the company, righting the ship. “Although 2016 was challenging in many respects, we finished the year on solid footing and with improved top-line momentum across our portfolio of world-class agencies,” CEO Scott Kaufman said in an earnings release. Read it.

On The Clock

It’s been a year since Duracell spun out of P&G as the product giant reinvested in more stable brands. Can the battery company survive on its own? Batteries are the go-to example of a business category being disrupted by Amazon, whose private-label batteries sell for a quarter the price of retail. “It’s like being a surgeon,” says Duracell CMO Tatiana-Vivienne Jouanneau about exiting P&G. “You’re taking the heart out of a body and moving it to a body that’s a different size and nature, but you can’t let it stop beating.” More at Digiday.

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