Thursday, March 24, 2022

Byron Allen Warns Ad Market of Nielsen’s ‘Monopoly’


The decades-long dominance of Nielsen Holdings Plc as the go-to provider of television ratings services has stifled innovation for the media and advertising industries, warns media mogul Byron Allen, according to Bloomberg.

“In my humble opinion, this is a monopoly,” Allen, chief executive officer of Allen Media Group, a parent company of The Weather Channel and dozens of network-affiliated stations, said Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “We need different platforms. This isn’t working.”

Allen filed a civil lawsuit this month against the company alleging that a repeated undercount of viewers has cost the industry billions of dollars in ad revenue. Nielsen’s measurement tools are only embraced by ad agencies because it’s “comfortable” for their business, according to Allen.

A spokesperson for Nielsen said the case “has no substance to it.”



“Nielsen has filed numerous lawsuits that has shut down other innovation, competitors, and it’s a monopoly,” Allen said. “When you get a monopoly these are the results. You get, what we believe, is an inferior service, an inferior product and pricing that’s not competitive.”

Allen said more media businesses have come forward since his lawsuit became public knowledge. “This is going to be a very, very large class-action lawsuit, and probably one of the biggest in corporate history,” he said.

Allen was among final bidders for regional broadcaster Tegna Inc. Bloomberg News reported last month that he was preparing a bid to purchase the Denver Broncos, a move that would make him the first Black majority owner of a National Football League team.

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