Nielsen, Cumulus Media Reach New Agreement

Nielsen has announced that Cumulus Media has signed a multi-year extension for radio ratings services for all Portable People Meter (PPM) and radio diary measured markets. Westwood One, the largest radio network in the U.S. and the national-facing arm of Cumulus Media, is also included in this agreement. This multi-year agreement provides Nielsen’s radio and network radio ratings services for Cumulus and Westwood One’s 446 radio stations across 90 local markets.

The deal comes amid a bankruptcy filing this past week, which indicated Cumulus Media is in arrears to Nielsen for $6.6M.

“Despite the abundance of media options, radio continues to lead the way in reach and ROI. We are excited to extend our agreement with Nielsen so that we can continue to leverage their vast datasets and analytical insights to provide the proof that we do indeed deliver the highest ROI of any local media to our advertisers,” said Bob Walker, Executive Vice President Operations, Cumulus Media.

In addition to extending Nielsen’s core audio ratings services, Cumulus and Westwood One will continue to have access to local qualitative behavioral data from Nielsen Scarborough, enhanced talent analytics from Nielsen N-Score and national networks ratings from Nielsen RADAR. As part of the agreement, Westwood One will extend its use of Nielsen Marketing Cloud and Pointlogic for enhanced purchase-based marketing and media planning functions.

“We are pleased to extend our audio measurement agreement with Cumulus Media,” said Brad Kelly, Managing Director, Nielsen Audio. “This extension is a symbol of the mutual respect and trust that exists between Nielsen and Cumulus, and we believe that our measurement services will enable Cumulus to tell their complete audience story to their advertisers and capture their fair share of media ad dollars.”

Nielsen is committed to total audience measurement and audio is big piece of that story as it reaches more than 90% of American adults every week. Radio’s unmatched reach is a great appeal to marketers that want to connect with broad-based consumers and increase the effectiveness of their advertising.