CBS and Nielsen are "without a contract after their current deal lapsed" at 12:01am ET yesterday, according to sources cited by Brian Steinberg of VARIETY. Talks are "likely to continue." However, sources said that CBS is "determined to secure a pact that it feels makes the best economic sense for the company while Nielsen believes the network will find negotiating with advertisers more difficult if it does not have access to its measures of audience viewing." At issue is a "long-running complaint from TV networks that Nielsen isn’t measuring the many different audiences for their programming as well as it should." As smartphones, tablets and connected TVs "gain more consumer acceptance, audiences are increasingly able to stream their TV favorites in on-demand fashion, making the task of counting them exponentially more difficult." In such an environment, TV nets "believe Nielsen’s overnight ratings are no longer the critical yardstick of viewership they once were" (VARIETY.com, 12/31). DEADLINE.com's Dade Hayes noted the most recent CBS-Nielsen deal was "pegged by insiders" at about $100M. CBS, like other traditional programmers in the "rapidly evolving media landscape, has been wary of the cost of retaining Nielsen given what it considers the limitations of its measurement capabilities." Sources said that CBS is "prepared to explore alternative ratings solutions, including smaller Nielsen rival comScore." Since acquiring Rentrak in '16, comScore has "pushed to create a viable rival to Nielsen, which has controlled the ratings market for decades" (DEADLINE.com, 1/1).
THE RACE IS ON: DIGIDAY's Tim Peterson notes after "circling one another for years," the comScore-Nielsen rivalry to "become the industry’s chosen cross-platform measurement provider has heated up." Both companies this year "plan to roll out new measurement tools to give advertisers and media companies an equal look at cross-platform video audiences, whether people are watching a show or see an ad on linear TV or a streaming videos service." ComScore is "pressed to provide the in-depth person-based measurement that Nielsen’s panels provide, while Nielsen must aggregate more data to augment its panels and provide more minute measurement at the device level." The progress in measuring streaming is "indicative of the incremental progress" that industry execs expect to see from both companies in '19, as opposed to "something major such as a move away from panel-based measurement." Such a switch is "unlikely" while comScore and Nielsen each "remain public companies with investors that may not take kindly to drastic moves." A move away from panel-based measurement also would be "largely unwelcome among ad buyers" (DIGIDAY.com, 1/2).
