Gracenote on Thursday rolled out its first update under new owner Nielsen, which bought it for $560 million in December. The offering is an entertainment database that combines its video, music and sports metadata offerings. The company is betting metadata will play a larger part in media monetization. Gracenote tags the programming content it tracks […]
TV viewership is fragmenting faster than the advertising industry’s ability to adapt to it all. And advertisers bracing for the 2017 upfront season aren’t entirely satisfied with the big measurement companies. Consider Nielsen’s delayed Total Content Ratings product and comScore’s accounting snafu and anticipated delisting. “People are in dispute about what the measurement process should be,” […]
CES has always been about TV, and 2017 was no exception. Displays got a whole lot sharper and devices got a whole lot thinner. But the TV advancements most relevant to marketers and advertisers revolve not around the hardware but the software, which enables addressable ads and better measurement. To be fair, CES isn’t exactly […]
Nielsen intends to acquire Gracenote, a Tribune-owned company specializing in audio and video content recognition technology, for $560 million, the company confirmed on Tuesday. Gracenote will operate under Nielsen’s “Watch” business – the side of the house that measures audiences – and the acquisition is expected to close Q1 2017. If it goes through, Nielsen will […]
Facebook admitted additional measurement errors Wednesday, along with policy and organizational changes meant to narrow the trust gap between marketers and the mobile world’s leading ad platform. The news comes less than two months after Facebook disclosed that it had been overstating video engagement results, prompting backlash from agencies and concern from other digital media […]
Kantar Media, long considered a rival to Nielsen’s mainstay TV measurement business internationally, is restructuring the way it goes to market. Although Kantar Media previously operated as one of 12 distinct brands within the Kantar Group, sometimes there was a lack of visibility between different brands. “We’ve had a very strange organizational structure,” admits Andy Brown, chairman and […]
Roku has added comScore’s validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) to its list of video measurement partners. Although Roku had embedded Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings directly into its operating system in 2015, its customers wanted to use the vCE currency for measuring OTT, said Scott Rosenberg, VP of advertising and audience development for Roku. “We’re not trying […]
Turner will speak at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O Conference in New York on Oct. 27. Turner took a bold position when it promised that by 2020 more than 50% of its inventory would be transacted against audience guarantees. Since then, CNN, TNT and TruTV’s parent broadcaster has grown its data management and marketing services business, to […]
Welcome to episode no. 2 of AdExchanger Talks, a new podcast on data-driven marketing. Let us know if you like it, and please subscribe via your preferred channel. Use the player below to listen now. What are the trends in video consumption across traditional TV and digital channels? Ask Lynda Clarizio, Nielsen’s President of US […]
Consumers are subscribing to more streaming video-on-demand services these days, but “cord cutting” may not be as rampant as some would lead you to believe. Because cable networks measure audience viewership differently than certain Nielsen metrics, the contrast tends to create an apples-to-oranges scenario when tracking overall viewership. That’s why TV networks defend the claim […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Damian Garbaccio, executive vice president at Nielsen Marketing Cloud. We all know that consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies spend a lot on advertising. In the US alone, CPG and consumer […]
Although the Rio Olympics broke its own record for reserved ad dollars set during the London Games in 2012, broadcast is losing its iron grip on live sports media. Ratings for NBC across a portfolio of Comcast-owned properties (like MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Golf Channel, Telemundo and the NBC smart-TV app channel) were down compared […]
Several major radio companies – iHeartMedia, Cumulus, Entercom, Cox and Sun Broadcast Group – said Thursday that they were collaborating with audio-recognition app Shazam to create an “audio audience measurement solution” that “will deliver market- and station-level audience metrics” across digital and terrestrial radio. According to a release, the metric uses these companies’ propriety data […]
Nielsen has entered into an open marriage with three viewability providers. The company will now support Integral Ad Science, Moat and DoubleVerify within its digital audience measurement solution, Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings. Although it had a preexisting relationship with Integral Ad Science since 2012, clients have requested support for alternative providers that fit their preferences. […]
Nielsen is looking to score more sports marketing dollars with its acquisition of Repucom, a sports research firm founded in Australia and now based out of the US. Nielsen, which closed the deal on Tuesday, did not disclose the price tag, though German sports industry trade pub Sponsors reported it to be more than $100 […]
With TV upfront negotiations underway, digital tactics are wielding more influence as networks court buyers with cross-platform guarantees and enhanced data products. “You can still invest client dollars in proven media, but upfronts are now about online video partnerships you can make long-term investments in,” said Maureen Bosetti, the chief investment officer for Interpublic Group’s […]
CNN is signing on with comScore’s syndicated measurement service Xmedia, a competitive offering to Nielsen’s Total Audience measurement. Xmedia is designed to help media companies understand their cross-platform audiences by tracking unduplicated reach across TV, digital, set-top box and mobile properties. CNN now claims to have a total unduplicated audience of 174 million across TV, […]
Nielsen predominantly partnered with big marketing clouds à la Adobe to date – until now. The measurement giant on Tuesday rolled out the Nielsen Marketing Cloud, which is is the company’s first major attempt to unify various homegrown and acquired assets into a single platform for media owners and advertisers. A number of food and […]
ComScore’s got a memo for Nielsen: It’s moving into cross-platform video and audience measurement – big time. Just days after comScore inked a multiyear measurement deal with Viacom, the first since its merger with Rentrak, it struck a strategic partnership with Adobe, the two companies revealed on Tuesday at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas. […]
Call it the holistic grail: the ability to connect advertising, ecommerce activity and in-store buying with a single measurement. No one’s filled that gap yet, but a bunch of companies are taking incremental steps. Earlier this month the location analytics shop Placed added a product for attributing in-store lift to its suite. Then last week […]
ComScore has struck a measurement deal with Twitter to enable a tagless integration to its digital audience delivery and analytics system, validated Campaign Essentials (vCE). The integration will take effect in Q2 and will give advertisers access to digital GRPs and reach and frequency metrics. These new reporting features will be available directly within Twitter’s […]
Nielsen is increasing its ownership stake in Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) – its joint venture with shopper marketing company Catalina – from 50% to a majority 63.5%. Nielsen Catalina connects TV viewing and digital ad exposure to in-store buying, which Nielsen claims perfectly aligned with its business strategy. “Helping clients find the right audiences and […]
ComScore and Rentrak have completed their merger, cinching a deal aimed at establishing new multiscreen currencies to rival TV ratings incumbent Nielsen. The all-stock deal was originally valued at $732 million based on market prices at the time the deal was announced in September. The merger, which gained shareholder approvals late Friday, represented $767.7 million in final deal value, […]
Do Nielsen and alcoholic beverages mix? The two may sound like unlikely companions, but Nielsen has partnered with the creator of a mobile app called OpenBar to roll out a new measurement platform for alcoholic beverage marketing. The platform, Nielsen Bar Moments, will launch in the first quarter of 2016. BARTRENDr, the data analytics company […]
Nielsen’s having a tough week. On Tuesday, comScore and Rentrak, two of Nielsen’s top competitors, announced their intention to merge into a single measurement monolith. And on Thursday, business channel CNBC, a division of NBCUniversal, will officially kick Nielsen to the curb, turning instead to research firm Cogent Reports for its audience measurement. Comcast-owned NBCUniversal […]
There’s apparently power in numbers in the fight against ratings fixture Nielsen. Measurement companies comScore and Rentrak have reached a definitive agreement to merge, the two companies announced Tuesday. (press release) In the stock-for-stock merger, Rentrak is to merge into a wholly owned subsidiary of comScore. ComScore CEO Serge Matta will take the reins as CEO […]
Beyond knowing whether an ad was viewed and for how long, marketers want to verify viewability percentages against key audience segments, which is the basis of a new alliance between Nielsen and Integral Ad Science (IAS). Although the two companies have partnered since 2012, they have now expanded the scope of their relationship to offer […]
In the world of independent, third-party measurement, Symphony Advanced Media (SAM) is David and Nielsen is Goliath. But the San Francisco-based media measurement and research firm is looking to take on incumbents like Nielsen and comScore with Tuesday’s launch of cross-screen measurement tool VideoPulse. A+E, Viacom, NBC and Warner Brothers’ Media Research and Insights are […]
A troupe of traditional broadcasters has a message for media buyers: Your perception of audio streaming audiences is skewed, according to a study by Advertiser Perceptions released Tuesday. The study, commissioned by terrestrial broadcasters (including Cumulus, Westwood One, iHeartMedia, CBS Radio, Cox Media Group, Hubbard Radio, Radio Advertising Bureau and Radio One) found media buyers […]
Nielsen’s acquisition in March of data-management platform and exchange eXelate is already proving its value, the measurement company said during its Q2 earnings call Tuesday. EXelate is part of Nielsen’s marketing effectiveness suite and has been instrumental in securing client buy-in of marketing analytics. Recent wins include Walmart and major consumer packaged-goods companies, said Nielsen CEO Mitch Barns. “An increasingly programmatic […]
