As this 12 months’s upfront season involves a detailed, Nielsen stays the business chief, however amid a messy measurement struggle, rivals aren’t backing down.
And why ought to they? Lately, measurement rivals Comscore, iSpot, and VideoAmp all acquired a particular nod from the U.S. Joint Trade Committee (JIC), which licensed the three as currencies of file forward of the 2025-2026 broadcast TV season.
A foreign money is the unit of worth that advert consumers and advert sellers use to transact throughout the multibillion-dollar TV promoting business. For years, Nielsen’s C3 and C7 panel scores—which measure industrial viewership over a three- and seven-day interval—had been the business commonplace.
The JIC certification comes as business large Nielsen is uniquely weak because it tries to reinvent its foreign money for the long run.
The corporate’s new panel + large knowledge providing—which mixes Nielsen’s conventional panel with knowledge from cable, satellite tv for pc set-top containers, and good TVs throughout 45 million households and 75 million units—is the foreign money it’s backing for this 12 months’s TV upfront season.
However two high-ranking media consumers have informed ADWEEK that inconsistencies with Nielsen’s panel + large knowledge have led to delays and disruptions in upfront negotiations, as thousands and thousands of {dollars} dangle within the steadiness.
Nielsen has urged advertisers to be affected person. “A foreign money change is far completely different than an information change,” Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao informed ADWEEK at Cannes Lions in June. “It’s a workflow change. It’s a piece course of change.”
Rivals like VideoAmp, Comscore, and iSpot, nevertheless, are chomping on the bit to undercut this core a part of Nielsen’s enterprise, with the JIC backing enhancing their long-term viability.
“The timing couldn’t come at a extra crucial second because the promoting business is in flux, planning an upfront based mostly on a strategy that’s unstable,” Peter Liguori, the newly-named CEO of VideoAmp, informed ADWEEK, of the corporate’s JIC acknowledgement.
Liguori added that the JIC accreditation ought to instill confidence in advertisers that they will transact on different currencies. In spite of everything, in accordance with the VideoAmp CEO, “many audit committee members” are additionally a part of the audit committee for the Media Ranking Council (MRC), the opposite large measurement score company within the business.
Loosening Nielsen’s tight grip
Regardless of Nielsen’s stumbles in recent times, it’s laborious for rivals to get greater than a toehold.
At the same time as a few of these rivals rejoice the JIC accreditation, Nielsen’s panel + large knowledge foreign money has MRC accreditation, which supplies a extra intensive measurement audit than the JIC.
Additionally, the JIC accreditation isn’t going to influence the present upfront season, in accordance with two advert consumers. It’s “too late at this level” within the upfront season to begin utilizing a brand new foreign money as a complete, a type of advert consumers stated, particularly with publishers already closing offers.
Nonetheless, the customer famous that they’ve been encouraging shoppers to lean into various currencies for superior audiences and data-driven linear.
For a lot of measurement upstarts, one of the best alternative to unseat Nielsen was in 2021, when it misplaced MRC accreditation for lowballing each native and nationwide audiences in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. However Nielsen regained nationwide accreditation in April 2023.
Publicly, Nielsen claims it welcomes competitors: “It makes us, and the business, higher,” a spokesperson stated.
But it surely has additionally hammered its rivals with a gradual drumbeat of lawsuits, submitting ten patent infringement complaints during the last three years in opposition to rivals like TVision, HyphaMetrics, ACRCloud, and VideoAmp.
When VideoAmp bought one lawsuit dismissed earlier this 12 months, Nielsen swooped in with a brand new grievance, proper earlier than the corporate’s second Vampfront occasion in April, the place it showcased new merchandise to shoppers.
Nielsen’s huge assets give it the power to file its endless lawsuits to weaken its competitors, Liguori stated. Even dismissals have a price.
“It’s all a part of their technique to empty us of our monetary assets,” he informed ADWEEK. “If you’re a monolith, you possibly can play that recreation.”
Liguori added that Nielsen’s sturdy public relations staff additionally provides the corporate the higher hand: “It’s like a Lamborghini subsequent to a horse and buggy,” he stated.
A horse’s likelihood in opposition to a Lambo
Since Liguori took over the corporate in 2024 amid the exit of former CEO Ross McCray and layoffs affecting 20% of VideoAmp’s workforce, the corporate has been vocal in messaging in opposition to Nielsen, going to market with $600 million in funding and an providing comprising set-top-box and good TV knowledge from 40 million households and 65 million units. It has additionally fortified itself with key partnerships with publishers reminiscent of Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount.
This has led to wins leveraging among the business’s discontent in opposition to Nielsen.
As an example, Paramount turned to VideoAmp in late 2024 for its viewership reporting over a dispute with the price of Nielsen’s providers, and, throughout its January Golden Globes broadcast—one in all VideoAmp’s first main public exams—VideoAmp discovered that the awards present reached a median of 10.1 million viewers. Nielsen would later report that the occasion reached a median of 9.3 million.
Relating to the Golden Globes state of affairs, a spokesperson from Nielsen stated that numbers had been issued so shoppers can get “a full view of the business.”
“That’s one of many nice advantages of working with Nielsen—you get a full evaluation of TV viewership over a number of years,” the spokesperson added. “This info was sought out by the business as a result of we offer probably the most correct and trusted measurement.”
Whereas a number of publishers, together with Paramount and NBCUniversal, declare to be measurement-agnostic, two consumers informed ADWEEK that the consistency of Nielsen throughout the business makes it a staple that’d be laborious to supplant.
Liguori stated that as a substitute of displacing Nielsen as a foreign money, he needs VideoAmp to have a spot in a multicurrency world, the place it has already made strides. During the last 12 months, VideoAmp reported $3 billion in foreign money ensures, an 880% year-over-year development, the corporate stated.
However even when the TV business had been to constantly transact on a number of currencies, the market typically treats Nielsen’s numbers because the “fact set,” in accordance with an exec from one other Nielsen competitor.
Rivals have additionally complained that Nielsen prevents its knowledge from being in contrast with different measurement suppliers, which solidifies Nielsen because the supplier of that “fact set,” making it troublesome to chip away at its dominance.
“The business has full transparency on our knowledge and measurement—and so they can replicate our measurement on our platforms, which they’re skilled to make use of,” a Nielsen spokesperson stated in response.
Taking measure of the business’s future
Regardless of complaints in regards to the upheaval round Nielsen’s panel + large knowledge providing, it doesn’t appear as if the TV business is stepping away from it.
As a substitute, they’re attempting to adapt to it.
Talking to ADWEEK in Could, John Halley, Paramount’s advert gross sales chief, stated, “When the information units change, there’s some turbulence there that must be understood. That course of is a web new for many advertisers, most companies, and most publishers.”
In the meantime, a Nielsen spokesperson has stated the agency is “proud” to be the primary firm to earn accreditation for large knowledge + panel and first-party dwell streaming, whereas it continues to broaden out-of-home measurement.
“Massive knowledge + panel is the newest innovation that’s pushed, supported, and embraced by our shoppers, and it represents probably the most correct measurement thus far,” a Nielsen spokesperson stated.
On the identical time, advert consumers are conserving the door open for rivals like VideoAmp.
“Within the larger 50,000-foot view, VideoAmp has made numerous strides, and so they’ve completed loads,” a media purchaser who attended Vampfront informed ADWEEK.
One media purchaser talking anonymously stated that Nielsen is “not the one recreation on the town,” and VideoAmp has “emerged as a real competitor.”
