M+E Connections

The ongoing growth of Nielsen’s Gracenote Content Services provided the company with a boost in its fourth quarter (ended Dec. 31) and the company plans to continue “growing Gracenote’s geographic footprint,” according to David Kenny, the company’s CEO.

Nielsen is also looking to expand the use of Gracenote ID and introduce new products in 2022, he said Feb. 28 on an earnings call with analysts.

Gracenote ID, the company’s UPC code for video, sports and music content, is “widely deployed throughout the media ecosystem, enabling cross-platform linkage and universal search across video content,” Kenny said.

The company is “leveraging audience measurement data and Gracenote metadata together with the continued buildout of our analytics offerings,” he also pointed out.

That includes the recent launch of Audience Predict, which he said “enables data-driven decision-making around content acquisition and distribution.”

Gracenote debuted that new content analytics tool in December, saying Audience Predict forecasts potential future entertainment programming performance, using a combination of content metadata, syndicated Nielsen audience measurement data and advanced machine learning technology. It is geared toward content owners and distributors, providing them with predictive insights to make strategic decisions for maximizing return on programming investments, the company said at the time.

High Single-Digit Growth

In Nielsen’s Consumers and Digital Solutions business, “growth in the digital products is far outpacing the average in measurement and Gracenote is growing in the high single digits, both reflecting our opportunities as consumers shift to streaming,” Kenny said on the earnings call.

The six largest U.S. media companies, “some of our most vocal critics, in aggregate, grew faster in 2021 than in the prior few years as they added Nielsen’s digital solutions,” he noted.

Growth outside the U.S., meanwhile, accelerated to 7% and “will remain strong, driven by adoption of Nielsen’s digital solutions,” Kenny predicted.

Meanwhile, Nielsen ONE, the company’s cross-media measurement solution, “uniquely aligns with the needs of advertisers and their agencies, and they will ultimately choose the currency for ad spending,” he told analysts.

Today, media companies “need to be digital or streaming-first to keep pace with audience behavior,” he noted.

“Our relevance with leading digital-first players is growing, and we are adding increased value to traditional TV clients as they shift to streaming,” he also said.

“We’re executing on Nielsen ONE,” he said, noting: “We hit all of our 2021 milestones [and] we’re on track to deliver the full solution later this year and begin driving industry adoption.”

Nielsen’s Gauge data showed that streaming “reached an all-time high in January [and is] now accounting for 38 percent of viewing within the 18 to 54 age demographic,” he told analysts, adding: “Leading streaming-first platforms recognize the value of having a common metric for audiences as linear TV and digital converge, and no other third party measurement is as valued as Nielsen across the digital ecosystem.”

Noting that Google recently cited measurement as a key to its success in connected TV, he said the Alphabet division is hosting its YouTube Brandcast advertising showcase and will be “using Nielsen data to demonstrate the strength and relevance of their platform.”

Roku also announced it’s adding Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings as an audience guarantee, “making Roku the first ad buying platform to launch Nielsen guarantees across streaming television,” he said.

‘Making the Right Investments’

Nielsen is “making the right investments in data, methods and quality to remain the best measure of how all people consume all media, and we do this at a scale and specificity greater than anyone else,” Kenny said.

“We’re integrating set-top box” and automatic content recognition (ACR) data from about 30 million households into Nielsen’s national TV measurement, he told analysts.

Although set-top box data offers “valuable insight into consumption via cable and satellite subscription,” he pointed out that almost 50% of all households no longer have a set-top box.”

And that trend is only expected to continue. “We expect cord cutting to continue, so we’re focused on connected TV data which we believe will be more resilient over time,” Kenny said.

In 2021, Nielsen also doubled the number of its connected TV partners, which enables it to measure 75% of connected TV (CTV) media spend, he noted. “Our coverage includes Hulu, Amazon, Roku, YouTube, Vizio WatchFree and Samsung TV Plus,” he said.

“When we include PCs and mobile devices, we cover 87 percent of total video digital spend,” he told analysts, adding: “We cover 19 of the top streaming platforms, which together represent approximately 90 percent of streaming usage.”

Also on tap: Nielsen is “integrating always-on measurement into Roku’s ad-buying platform… and we’re focused on always-on measurement with other digital platforms,” he said.

Q4 Results

Nielsen reported total Q4 revenue grew 2.5% from Q4 the prior year, to $894 million. Measurement revenue increased 3.7% to $647 million.

Net income from continuing operations attributable to Nielsen shareholders was $242 million, up from $8 million. Net income from continuing operations per share on a diluted basis was 67 cents, up from 2 cents.

Adjusted earnings per share came in at 46 cents, up from 32 cents, “reflecting a lower tax rate year over year, offset in part by lower adjusted EBITDA and higher depreciation and amortization,” the company said in its earnings news release.