Latest news with #VideoAmp
Axios
27-05-2025
- Business
- Axios
Scoop: Nielsen strikes WNBA measurement deal, largest ever for women's league
Nielsen, the established television measurement company, has struck a new multiyear deal with the WNBA alongside the NBA to measure its television viewership across traditional TV and streaming, a source confirmed to Axios. Why it matters: It's the largest commercial measurement deal that Nielsen has ever struck with a women's sports league. Nielsen has an existing deal with the Ladies Professional Golf Association, but the WNBA agreement marks a significant milestone in the advancement of women's sports rights. Zoom in: The deal represents the first time that Nielsen has agreed to measure the WNBA's ratings officially as a client alongside the NBA, the source confirmed. The agreement, which was struck last quarter, ensures the WNBA will get official access to Nielsen ratings as part of a paid partnership, instead of relying on data from the NBA or data that media partners may or may not release. The direct data represents significant progress in the WNBA's media rights journey. The WNBA last year struck a landmark 11-year media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime and NBC that values its live rights at $200 million per year, about quadruple its previous deal. The WNBA and NBA did not respond to requests for comment. The big picture: The shift to streaming during the pandemic pushed TV companies to experiment with new measurement alternatives such as VideoAmp and While programmers have been public about their efforts to experiment with new vendors, leagues have continued to rely heavily on Nielsen. They tend not to distribute ratings publicly from smaller alternatives. Case in point: During Paramount's multimonth contract blackout with Nielsen, the network never distributed ratings publicly from other vendors for its NFL games. How it works: While most leagues allow their distribution partners to publicize ratings, the big leagues prefer to pay to ink direct deals with Nielsen to get their hands on crucial ratings data themselves. By the numbers: Nielsen's deals with leagues are expensive but tend not to be as high as deals with major TV networks, costing upwards of tens of millions instead of hundreds of millions. The newly signed NBA renewal deal rounds out Nielsen's partnerships with all of America's biggest leagues. Nielsen currently has direct data deals with the NFL, MLS, NHL, PGA, NCAA, MLB, UFC, WWE and Premiere League, a source said. Zoom out: For years, streamers were hesitant to embrace Nielsen ratings, arguing their proprietary figures were more reliable. But as streaming became more competitive and as more streamers started to experiment with live programming, most major services have embraced Nielsen as a reliable third-party. What to watch: As women's sports leagues land bigger media rights deals, direct agreements with measurement vendors ensures not just that their viewership numbers are adequately tracked for advertisers, but also grants specific insights on how their audiences are evolving.
Business Wire
06-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
VideoAmp Formally Initiates the Media Rating Council (MRC) Audit Process
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- VideoAmp, a leading media measurement company transforming advertising, has officially entered the audit phase with the Media Rating Council (MRC). This significant step underscores VideoAmp's unwavering commitment to transparency, data fidelity, and achieving adherence to the highest industry standards in media measurement. 'We are thrilled to officially begin the MRC auditing process,' said Tony Fagan, President, Technology & Strategy at VideoAmp. 'This is a major milestone that reflects our confidence in the rigor of VideoAmp's currency-grade data and methodologies. While the road to accreditation is long and resource-intensive, we are fully committed and understand the importance of earning that coveted stamp of approval.' VideoAmp's platform is built on high-fidelity data sets powered by VALID™, its proprietary big data and technology engine, which fuels its measurement and currency solutions. This enables advertisers and media owners to plan, measure, and transact on media investments with greater precision. The VALID™ engine underpins VideoAmp's commitment to delivering currency-grade measurement and has positioned the company as a trusted partner for brands and publishers seeking alternatives to legacy systems and a more modern, future-proof approach to cross-platform measurement. The MRC audit includes a comprehensive evaluation of VideoAmp's national linear TV data and audit testing to help ensure compliance with established industry guidelines, including the MRC's Minimum Standards for Media Rating Research. By voluntarily undergoing this rigorous assessment, VideoAmp aims to provide clients and partners with increased confidence in the reliability and integrity of its measurement solutions. This development marks a key inflection point in VideoAmp's journey to become a trusted currency-grade measurement provider. The advancement of VideoAmp to the next level of the MRC's auditing process is a clear signal of the company's commitment to accountability and third-party validation. This initiative aligns with VideoAmp's ongoing efforts to foster industry collaboration and promote the adoption of advanced currencies in media transactions. By pursuing MRC accreditation, VideoAmp continues to demonstrate its leadership in driving innovation and establishing benchmarks that benefit the entire advertising ecosystem. About VideoAmp VideoAmp is a media measurement company transforming advertising. By leveraging the power of currency-grade big data, VideoAmp's solutions provide clients with access to advanced audiences and the ability to precisely plan, optimize and measure media investments across platforms to achieve better outcomes. With these solutions, media sellers can increase the value of their inventory, while advertisers can benefit from increased return on investment. VideoAmp has seen incredible adoption for its measurement and currency solutions with 880% YoY growth, 98% coverage of the TV publisher ecosystem, 11 agency groups and more than 1,000+ advertisers. VideoAmp is headquartered in Los Angeles and New York with offices across the United States. To learn more, visit
Forbes
10-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
This Year Ad Marketplace Will Have Choices On The Negotiating Currency
Once again, the TV/video upfront presentations scheduled for May, kicking off the annual ad buying frenzy in which tens of billions of dollars will be invested. While this year the biggest concern will be the state of the roller coaster economy and its impact on ad budgets, another issue will be which audience measurement provider will be used as the negotiating currency for advertisers. In recent years Nielsen, which had dominated audience measurement for decades, has been challenged by several competitors, this will continue in the 2025-26 upfront. During the 2024-25 season, Nielsen's biggest rival was VideoAmp. In early October, Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, Paramount+, Pluto TV and a bullpen of cable networks, failed to renew their contractual agreement with Nielsen. Paramount cited cost as the primary reason for the impasse. In addition, there has been a long festering frustration in Nielsen's inability to measure cross-platform and advanced segmented audiences beyond traditional age/gender targets. As the primary Nielsen replacement, Paramount relied on VideoAmp. Early in the 2024-25 season, CBS made a number of decisions (i.e., program renewals) based on VideoAmp's viewing data. In early February, Paramount and Nielsen reached a contractual agreement. Under the new multiyear deal, Nielsen will measure all of Paramount's platforms including national/local broadcast, all cable networks as well as streaming. The four-month impasse is believed to have been the longest time a prominent Nielsen client went without their ratings service in recent memory. While the standoff was taking place, the Media Rating Council (MRC), an audience measurement watchdog, in January, announced they had completed their accreditation procedure covering Nielsen's Big Data + Panel National TV measurement. Nielsen is the first audience measurement provider to earn MRC accreditation for its big data sample, although rivals iSpot, Comscore and VideoAmp have been using big data sets for years. Nielsen's newly accredited national measurement service combines their long-running representative panel of about 42,000 households (101,000 persons) with data from cable/satellite set-top boxes and ACR data from smart TVs from 45 million households and 75 million devices. These suppliers of big data come from Comcast, Dish, DirecTV, Roku and Vizio. As a result, Nielsen will no longer be producing panel only ratings, a methodology used as the negotiating currency since 1987. In a press release, Nielsen noted Big Data + Panel was used by a number of broadcasters and agencies during last year's upfront negotiations. The new data set will be in place for the 2025 upfront negotiations. (Previously, the MRC had suspended Nielsen's accreditation for local and national measurement in 2021 for undercounting audiences. Nielsen's national ratings regained their accreditation in 2023. Nielsen's local TV ratings service remains under accreditation suspension.) Last fall, the MRC announced they had approved the use of first-party live streaming data into Nielsen's national ratings service. Among the beneficiaries is Amazon that will now be able to embed their own data for NFL Thursday Night Football and potentially upcoming NBA games with Nielsen. Amazon has held the belief that Nielsen has been undercounting actual viewing. The NFL supported the announcement. Another change will be Nielsen's expanded out-of-home coverage. In late January (in time for Super Bowl LIX) Nielsen announced they had enlarged their National TV out-of-home (OOH) panel from 65% coverage of US TV households to 100% (excluding Alaska and Hawaii). While Nielsen and VideoAmp (and others) have been competing with content providers and advertisers, there has been another confrontation taking place in the courtroom. In early 2024 Nielsen filed a lawsuit against VideoAmp claiming they had violated two of Nielsen's patents. That lawsuit was dismissed by the U.S. District Judge on March 31, 2025. Within days of the dismissal, Nielsen filed another patent lawsuit in the same federal court against VideoAmp. This lawsuit involves the patents used for measuring out-of-home TV viewing via mobile phones. Nielsen has had a history of suing competitive audience measurement companies over patent infringements. According to Ad Age, since 2021 (when they lost its MRC accreditation), and including the most recent lawsuit against VideoAmp, Nielsen has filed ten claims against rival measurement companies. These include TVision, HyphaMetrics, ACRCloud and TVSquared (since acquired by Innovid). Four have been dismissed. Gearing up for the upfronts, earlier this month, VideoAmp hosted an event called 'The Vampfronts'. The event included testimonials from users, conversations with brand marketers, ad sales executives and ad agency personnel. During the event VideoAmp announced they were undergoing accreditation with the MRC. According to Deadline, a prominent takeaway was 'The Multi-Currency World Has Arrived'. In addition, VideoAmp announced a new multi-year agreement with TelevisaUnivision. In early May, Nielsen will be hosting their own press conference going over the latest audience trends. In addition, in March, iSpot, another Nielsen competitor, announced the launch of the ad industry's first business outcome solution capable of providing attribution, at scale, for video advertisers. The new service is called 'Outcomes of Scale', Paramount Global is the iSpot client to sign on. Also, earlier this month, Comscore, a long-time Nielsen competitor, announced the MRC has awarded accreditation for their household-level TV measurement. This accreditation covers their national and local TV Time-Based Grid reports; specifically, only household, age and gender 'households with' metrics. Josh Chasin, Principal at Knot Simpler and a long-time media research veteran in the 'alternative currency' battles, notes, 'The upfronts are like the ultimate cage match. There are a few things going on. First, there are now four alternative currencies— VideoAmp, iSpot, Comscore… and Nielsen. By finally introducing their panel-plus-big-data solution, Nielsen is effectively now both the incumbent, and an alternative currency. So even if you use the same company, you've always used, you have to deal with discontinuous change; this should constitute an opportunity for their competitors. Second, while Nielsen still dominates the transactional business based on age/gender persons demographics (e.g., Women 18-49), alternative currencies already command a dominant share of transactions done against advanced targets— auto intenders, advertiser first party data, and other precisely defined audiences. One reliable estimate I've heard is that 90% of advanced target business is now done using VideoAmp.' Chasin concludes, 'So, a key thing to watch this upfront will be, how much business is transacted against advanced targets? Because as business migrates from the traditional, linear/age-gender/ratings-based buying to addressable, impression-based, advanced target activation, the alternative currencies make more and more sense. And that's the direction advertising is moving.'
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
VideoAmp Adds Disney, Fox, Paramount to Planning Tool Using First-Party Streaming Data
The battle to become the de factor measuring stick for the media industry continues. VideoAmp, one of several rivals to Nielsen that have emerged in recent years, unveiled VXP, a new media-planning tool that will incorporate first-party streaming data from Disney, Fox and Paramount Global to help advertisers understand how audiences are consuming content across various media platforms. More from Variety Jessica Holscott Named CFO of Nielsen Paramount, Nielsen Strike New Measurement Deal, Ending Months-Long Feud 'Squid Game' Crosses 4 Billion Minutes Watched for the Second Week in a Row, Tying a 'Wednesday' Nielsen Record VideoAmp clients will be able to utilize the technology and with broader access in the second quarter of 2025, meaning that the data will be available for use during the media industry's annual 'upfront' sales market, said Peter Liguori, VideoAmp's chairman, during a recent interview. 'This is already on and will be in use for the upfront,' he said. VideoAmp introduces the new product as many advertisers and TV networks continue to explore alternatives to Nielsen in the streaming era. TV executives worry that people who watch their programs via digital means are not being counted reliably, even though Nielsen has introduced new products to do so and won accreditation for them. 'In pursuit of enabling precise, cross-platform planning for our rich and engaging content, this solution from VideoAmp will continue to expand the way we demonstrate performance and outcomes for advertisers across our inventory,' said Dana McGraw, senior vice president of data and measurement science at Disney, in a statement. 'By leveraging insights rooted in identity and our clean room engagement with VideoAmp, we're continuing to explore new ways we — and the wider industry — can plan and measure reach of audiences in streaming, with accuracy and precision.' Omnicom Media Group, which buys advertising inventory for advertisers including Pepsi, said it would use VideoAmp's service. 'Census-level data provides the necessary precision required for more accurate planning across linear, streaming and now social video,' added Megan Pagliuca, OMG's chief product officer. 'Given the abundance of inventory generated from the shift to CTV and the importance of social video platforms, it is critical we have a complete view into our video investment opportunities. By integrating audience and outcomes datasets from Omni — the open operating system that supports all Omnicom agencies — Omnicom has and continues to work diligently with VideoAmp to build planning capabilities that reflect the full scope of the marketplace, ensuring a unified approach across all video channels.' 'Working more closely with VideoAmp allows the planning process to be far more holistic and representative of all Fox inventory across both linear and digital,' said said Darren Sherriff, senior vice president of advanced TV at Fox, in a statement. 'As the paradigm for buying extends beyond traditional linear to include cross platform, demo and advanced audiences, this evolution is essential for our agency partners and we are happy to support it.' VideoAmp is also working with Snap, and Liguori indicated he expected other companies to join in weeks to come. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025
