The alternative currency bucket could use a rebrand.
Why should an entire category define itself in direct reference to the company (Nielsen, of course) it’s trying to unseat?
That referential and somewhat deferential phraseology – “alternative currency” – drives Peter Liguori, VideoAmp’s executive chairman, a little nuts, he says on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
The label stems “from this absolutely absurd notion that we are an industry that has almost 100% of its eggs in one basket,” says Liguori, who came to VideoAmp early last year from a career in broadcast TV, including as the former CEO of FX Networks.
But when Liguori casts shade at Nielsen as the lumbering incumbent, which he does liberally and without mincing words, it’s not just as someone with a product to sell. He’s been a programmer and he’s sat at the negotiating table with Nielsen.
To be fair, Nielsen has been expanding beyond panel-based measurement, notably by making a big investment in big data. This year marked the first year that Nielsen finally offered its Big Data + Panel product as a recognized currency – although not without a few serious hiccups during the rollout.
For example, there were delays in delivering TV ratings across dozens of local markets and also glitches that fed faulty data into the planning tools used for upfront buys.
Just as people don’t invest all of their 401(k) funds into one stock, Liguori argues, why entrust 100% of your measurement to “one currency provider that the industry is telling you is volatile and going through growing pains when you have a second choice and a third choice and a fourth choice?”
With that optionality in mind, perhaps a better name for “alternative currency” companies, then, would be something more like “multi-currency buckets,” he says.
“I actually feel that Nielsen is an alternative to fidelity,” Liguori says, “and we’re an alternative to the way things have been done habitually.”
Also in this episode: Don’t plan a funeral for linear TV just yet, the “ridiculousness” of Nielsen’s many patent infringement lawsuits against its competitors (including VideoAmp) and trying to explain the inertia that keeps TV broadcasters overly reliant on panels.
(And our condolences to Liguori, a die-hard Knicks fan. This episode was recorded before their loss to the Pacers in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals. 😭)
For more articles featuring Peter Liguori, click here.
