measurement

The founder of VideoAmp, a measurement-technology start-up that has been vying with Nielsen and others to create a new means of tabulating video audiences, is stepping down from his CEO role just as the company plans to lay off nearly a fifth of its staff. Ross McCray, who led VideoAmp as it struck deals with titans such as Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, will remain as a shareholder and board member at VideoAmp, but will be replaced by Peter Liguori, an industry veteran who has led Fox Entertainment, FX and Tribune Media, among other companies.

Entertainment marketers promoting new shows and movies can now use Samba TV measurement to understand viewership conversions generated by Snapchat campaigns.

Comscore said it plans to move forward with a reverse stock split that will turn 20 current shares of Comscore common into one higher-priced share. Approved by Comscore’s board of directors earlier this month, the move is designed to put the measurement company in compliance with Nasdaq rules that listed shares be worth at least $1 each.

The quest for a new way to measure TV audiences has taken years of tests, dozens of efforts to sample upstart technologies and hours of debates among big media companies, Madison Avenue buying firms and blue-chip advertisers. At present, no one seems to have devised a perfect solution. So Byron Allen decided to try.

Investment company 180 Degree Capital Corp., which holds a 7% stake in Comscore, is looking to shake up its board of directors in order to boost the measurement company’s sagging stock price. In filings with the SEC, 180 Capital blamed the 78.5% drop in Comscore’s share price since the company was recapitalized in 2021 on a “dysfunctional” board.

Comscore reported a slim Q3 loss as revenues fell. The measurement company said it $1.7 million, or 2 cents a share, in the quarter, compared to a $56.3 million loss, or 60 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue fell 2% to $91 million.

The buy and sell sides need to come together to determine how best to measure converged audiences, executives from Nexstar, Sinclair and Fox Television Stations said during a TVNewsCheck panel last week.

Another TV network group, Hallmark Media, has added VideoAmp as a “currency’ to make deals for advanced audiences and demographic guarantees. A year ago, VideoAmp said Hallmark Channel posted the best cable TV network results for its holiday season of programming in the fourth quarter for households with persons 18 years and older — as well as being tops among viewers 18-49 and 25-54, females 18-49, and females 25-54. VideoAmp says this ranking excludes broadcast, news, sports and kids’ networks.

After one year of operation, Netflix’s ad-supported option will offer new advertising and measurement innovations. In 2024, Netflix will offer global advertisers new measurement data for “campaign verification” via third-party providers. It did not provide further details about this. During the past 12 months, Netflix has rolled out global third-party verification from Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, as well as measurement/business outcome data from EDO Inc. Netflix also launched Nielsen One measurement in the U.S.

Even as it transitions its core audience measurement service from its legacy panel to a “Big Data-plus” one, Nielsen this morning announced a new product fusing its national TV audience panel with GWI’s (Global Web Index) massive digital consumer research panel. It’s hard to understand if the the new service, aptly named “Nielsen GWI Fusion,” is a true data fusion hooking respondent-level data between the two services, because the announcement describes it as “overlapping” Nielsen’s national TV panel with GWI USA’s data, but the companies said the output will enable media buyers to have a “detailed view of today’s diverse consumers with more than 250 million people represented.”

Demand-side platform/DSP The Trade Desk has integrated a new suite of AI-powered audience segments from Proximic by Comscore that allow for capturing TV ad exposure down to the local level for political campaign audience targeting.

Agencies report that the wrong ad creative is served to the wrong consumer nearly one in every three times, according to new research. The joint study from Advertiser Perceptions and Claravine fielded in August analyzed the impact of not having a data standards and a strategy in place. It showed how advertisers and agencies struggle with brand safety and in the process, found a connecting line between data standards, brand safety and ad targeting.

The integration makes Comscore an approved measurement vendor in Roku’s Measurement Partner Program and allows Comscore’s agency and advertiser clients to access Roku-specific co-viewing data across ad campaigns on the Roku platform, including The Roku Channel.

The measurement integration will enable transactions covering linear and total cross-platform reach for Paramount’s portfolio of networks and platforms.

It’s awarded accreditation for accurate and complete verification of national TV ad airings — a foundation for cross-platform ad-based measurement.

Nielsen challengers Comscore, iSpot and VideoAmp were granted conditional certification as currency for buying and selling advertising by the U.S. Joint Industry Committee (JIC) set up by media companies to set modern standards for audience measurement in a multiplatform environment.

Karthik Rao succeeds David Kenny at the top of the ratings firm as competition grows and measurement grows more complex.

The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), representing television networks, asked Nielsen not to go forward with its plan to incorporate viewing data from Amazon when coming up with the audience estimates advertisers will use to determine how much they pay for commercials on Thursday Night Football on Amazon’s Prime Video.

Recently appointed VP of Measurement Innovation Hanna Gryncwajg will lead the effort.

Comcast said it signed a multi-year data license renewal with Nielsen that will expand the ratings firm’s access to return-path data about TV usage from millions of cable subscribers’ homes. Nielsen will increase its use of Comcast data in its Nielsen One measurement system and broaden its use for local-TV measurement in the 94 markets the two companies share.

DirecTV Advertising has partnered with independent TV and cross-platform measurement, planning, analytics and attribution firm 605. Adding 605’s capabilities will provide DirecTV advertisers with more visibility into lower-funnel metrics, including sales lift, website activity, and geolocation visitation, complementing DirecTV’s D2C relationships, first-party data and audience-based media solutions, according to the television provider.

The Joint Industry Committee looking to create standards for measuring television viewing, has come out with the scoring system it will use to evaluate measurement companies seeking certification from the JIC, including Comscore, InnovidXP, iSpot, SambaTV, VideoAmp and 605.

Truthset said that Experian, a leading provider of marketing information, has joined Truthset’s Data Collective. The Data Collective was launched in 2022 with 20 members. It was established to provide an independent platform for companies to share and benchmark the accuracy of their marketing data. As a member, Experian can evaluate its marketing data against industry standards, enhancing the accuracy of the information it provides to clients.

Kimberly Gilberti, a key executive in the launch of Nielsen’s Nielsen One measurement system, has joined Experian Marketing Services as chief product officer. Gilberti joins Experian as it is enhancing its product offerings by using technology from Tapad, which was acquired by Experian in 2020. Gilberti spent 23 years at Nielsen, which lost a number of senior executives at the end of last year.

Spanish-TV giant TelevisaUnivsion wants to speak a different language than its English-speaking rivals when it comes to audience measurement. “We all know that today’s TV measurement is inadequate for our multi-screen world, and as a consequence, U.S Hispanics have been undercounted,” says Donna Speciale, president of U.S. ad sales and marketing at the company. “In fact, our audience is 26% bigger than current measurement. How did we get that information? Nielsen just told us,” she says, using its traditional panel-based tabulation as well as its “big data” product. “This is huge and and a huge step for equity,” she adds, noting that TelevisaUnivision will ask all agencies and clients to base this year’s upfront ad deals on that measurement.

“Precise measurement and accurate counting are the foundation of a healthy and high-functioning TV advertising ecosystem. When marketers have the right data, they can make the right decisions. That’s why we’re unifying our audiences and ushering in a modern-day approach to measurement for local advertisers. To better reflect today’s sophisticated consumer, we are vastly increasing the number of households we measure: We used to measure 1 in every 1,600-2,000 homes in a Local DMA. Now we’re going to measure 1 in every 2-5 homes—giving advertisers an unprecedented understanding of the true size and value of their audience, while also allowing them to pinpoint the exact audience they want to reach. And there’s more: With 48-hour TV measurement reporting at this scale, we’ll be able to help our clients optimize and improve the precision of their media buys in near real time.”

With an upfront presentation and the upfront market a week away, Warner Bros. Discovery U.S. Ad Sales has added new measurement partners. The list includes 605, ABCS Insights, DISQO, EDO, LoopMe and Pilotly —  to add “greater attribution and efficacy of advertising campaigns” to work on cross-platform and advanced audience deals.

Buyers and sellers are still playing with alternative currencies such as VideoAmp, iSpot are Comscore, but nothing will take the place of C3/C7 ratings in a majority of this year’s upfront sales. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Audience measurement firm Comscore has struck a deal with Magna, part of IPG Mediabrands, to use Comscore’s local television ratings to “inform” local TV buys across the organization. The companies said Comscore is the only alternative ratings service that will be used by Magna for local television. The firm also uses the Nielsen local ratings.

Nielsen said the Alpha version of its Nielsen One system designed to measure the consumption of content is now being used by clients including The Walt Disney Co., Mediahub, Sony Pictures Television, TelevisaUnivision, AMC Networks and Horizon Media. The Alpha version focuses on program-level measurement across platforms. It will be more broadly released in late 2024, Nielsen said.

Following back-to-back salvos from Nielsen and Comscore earlier in the day, the fledgling U.S. “JIC” opened its upfront-style event Thursday afternoon on an escalatory note, with one opening panelists describing their moves in explicitly war-like terms.

Hours after Nielsen issued a notice to clients Thursday reaffirming its support of Media Rating Council (MRC), it received its own endorsement from a strange bedfellow: Rival audience measurement service Comscore. “Comscore joins with Nielsen in support of MRC accreditation and their call for greater trust and transparency in the selling process and for currency that is informed by big data.” Comscore’s statement was issued just before OpenAP’s and the VAB’s “joint industry committee (JIC) began its upfront-style pitch on its ad currency certification plans to the ad industry in New York City Thursday afternoon.

Allen Media Group told advertisers at its upfront lunch on Wednesday in New York that it has retained VideoAmp to handle TV measurement. “Nielsen does a horrible job,” said Byron Allen, Allen Media Group founder-CEO. Allen has sued Nielsen for fraud, alleging that Nielsen measurement failure cost his company money.