Nielsen Invests in New TV Ratings Platform

Nielsen Holdings PLC’s finance chief Linda Zukauckas is allocating funds to a new TV ratings platform after the sale of the company’s market-analytics business earlier this year.

The Wall Street Journal reports the New York-based firm, which tracks consumer media habits in radio, video-streaming and traditional television, plans to increase its capital expenditures to improve the way it measures TV audiences, Zukauckas said. A large chunk of that money is budgeted for Nielsen One, a new product that will combine ratings from both streaming and live TV when it debuts next year.

Nielsen, a leading media measurement firm, in December unveiled plans for the project, which it hopes will become the U.S. standard for ratings by the fall of 2024, and eventually for the world. Other companies that measure TV viewership include Reston, Va.-based Comscore Inc. and startups such as TVision.

Streaming services have surged in popularity during the pandemic, while traditional pay-TV providers have continued to lose subscribers. Current metrics for traditional TV viewing aren’t comparable to those used to measure streaming, rendering a new system necessary, said Surinder Thind, senior vice president of equity research at Jefferies LLC, a financial-services firm.

Some of the money for Nielsen One will come from the company’s recent $2.4 billion divestment of Global Connect—since renamed NielsenIQ—a business that measures retail shopping behavior for packaged-goods companies. The sale, to private-equity firm Advent International Corp. in March, gives Nielsen more flexibility to invest in other areas of its business, the company has said.

Earlier this month, Nielsen reported a 2.5% rise in revenue to $863 million in the first quarter compared with the prior-year period. It posted net income of $573 million, up from a net loss of $18 million a year earlier, due partly to the separation of the market-analytics business.

“Top of mind for me is sustaining the business performance,” said Zukauckas. She became chief financial officer in February of last year, joining from American Express Co. after serving as deputy finance chief for about two years.

Nielsen One is expected to garner wide uptake from advertisers and media companies, which would allow its owner to put more money into dividends and share repurchases.