Industry Leaders React to comScore’s Acquisition of Rentrak

The news caused the otherwise politic and polite “non-competition” between Nielsen and Rentrak to publicly flare up during a panel at Advertising Week. This indicates to me that the measurement space is receiving a boost of attention beyond the usual suspects and even perhaps a needed kick in the pants to get long-planned initiatives that are still in the development stage out into the industry. I believe that competition is good and even welcome in the audience measurement space today. It encourages evolution, fresh thinking and experimentation in an industry that is undergoing massive transformation with new challenges (and opportunities) to capture media usage behavior.

The Players

Serge Matta, CEO comScore and Bill Livek, CEO Rentrak released a joint statement in a press release saying, “The time has come to build this measurement system of the present and future, and that’s what the merger of comScore and Rentrak will allow us to do.” At the Rentrak Investors Day meeting yesterday (Oct. 1) Livek announced that the joint efforts of comScore and Rentrak “brings two companies together with complementary assets -- products, data, people and innovation. This helps us define the future of measurement.”

Once the comScore/Rentrak announcement was made, Nielsen released an official statement to all media outlets which said, "Nielsen has the only Total Audience measurement, comparable across all screens. All of our data is fully representative of the U.S. population, and we deliver truly independent measurement. There are myriad analytics options for the media industry, but Nielsen’s focus is on delivering the actual currency ratings data used for trading billions of dollars in advertising. This requires superior quality, industrial-strength delivery and gold-standard audited processes and methods."

Industry Reactions

The reactions from the industry to the acquisition ran the gamut from elation to resignation. One executive who did not want to be quoted for attribution felt that “despite the perceived benefit to the industry of an emerging Nielsen competitor and possible currency expansion to include consumer demos, from a methodological soundness perspective it's a pretty unholy alliance.” 

But there were many who saw the acquisition as the opportunity for healthy competition and continued industry innovation. Here are a few quotes spanning networks, agencies, measurement companies and organizations:

Geri Wang, President, ABC Sales: “We support all industry initiatives that get us closer to a true cross-platform measurement solution. Increased resources and healthy competition are always positive things and the expertise of these two firms has great potential. We look forward to continuing and growing our relationship with this new enterprise."

Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development, NBC Universal:"Competition in the measurement space offers the opportunity to foster greater innovation among all the players. The introduction of a new measurement service which would offer a different way to crack the cross-platform code would be enormously beneficial to the entire media industry and can't come too soon."

Colleen Fahey Rush, Executive Vice President, Chief Research Officer, Viacom:"This merger paves the way for innovation in cross platform measurement to capture how audiences are consuming content on every screen and platform."

Howard Shimmel, Chief Research Officer, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.: “We are excited about the announcement and believe that competition is great and sorely needed. In the past, we have been vocal in our belief that there isn’t any one company that solves all of this. Like many in the industry with diverse portfolios, we need two different cross platform measurements – for a network like CNN, we need to accurately measure total reach across all platforms, including TV, digital and mobile. comScore offers that now, and our hope is that the product gets better with the Rentrak data. But we still need the ability to see how individual shows like “The Last Ship” on TNT perform in live, DVR, C3, VOD and SVOD, which seems to be the focus of the Nielsen Total Audience initiative. Each product has a strength applicable to our business, and it may be that we use both services for our insights and sales needs.”

Dave Morgan, CEO and founder, Simulmedia:“The comScore/Rentrak merger is certainly good for both of those companies. They gain scale and have a product set that complements each other well. The combined company will get more attention and grow faster than they could have on their own. It’s also good for Nielsen. The merged companies bring more attention into the marketing data and media measurement space and Nielsen will now get credit for the work that they've been doing in cross-platform that the market hasn't noticed. Plus, having a noisier comScore/Rentrak around will give Nielsen more firepower to push back on legacy media clients who may have slowed down some of their attempts to drive more innovation in the past.

Andy Brown, CEO and Chairman, Kantar Media: “Separately both comScore and Rentrak are good partners in the US and globally. I think the merger of the two companies will only accelerate our current initiatives.”

Brad Adgate, Senior Vice President, Research, Horizon Media: “I think this will be the biggest challenge to Nielsen since AGB rolled out their people meter sample nearly 30 years ago.”

Jane Clarke, CEO, Managing Director, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM): “CIMM congratulates comScore and Rentrak on their announced merger which will help bring needed competition into the field of cross-platform audience measurement. This area is undergoing significant pressure to innovate in response to quickly evolving consumer content consumption habits.  The proliferation of available measurement options will help innovation.  But at the same time, we cannot have a fractured approach to measurement.  While the technology that companies such as the combined comScore and Rentrak will bring to cross-platform measurement are greatly needed, it is still the cooperation and coordination of our industry that will enable effective measurement systems to be adopted.  CIMM, as the industry’s R&D body to advance cross platform measurement, was created to help foster that communication and cooperation so collectively we can address the needs and challenges that await the industry through a unified approach.”

George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director, the Media Rating Council:“I congratulate both organizations and wish them well. My hope is that comScore/Rentrak will continue to pursue accreditation of their existing products which remain very important, and that they will submit whatever cross-platform products they develop to the MRC process timely.  Project Blueprint (comScore’s initial cross platform measurement project), for example, was not submitted to MRC, and there is a clear need to audit/accredit these types of new methods. Notably, the new combined entity clearly has a "Big Data" heritage, but I caution about generalizing all of their data assets as "census."  Some sources are census, such as tag-based impression records (these require other actions such as IVT filtration), but others are not census and require specialized adjustments.”

Gayle Fuguitt, CEO and President, ARF: “We at the ARF issued a measurement mandate over a year ago, challenging the industry to deliver common GRP and ROI Metrics.  A valuable advancement is to see industry leaders like comScore and Rentrak merge to connect their measurement onto one data management platform instead of relying on advertisers to stitch it together. We know that the fastest growing media are the least well measured today, especially mobile.  Further advancements are needed now in mobile measurement and measurement precision across the board for true GRP and ROI metrics for speed to decisions.”

Conclusion

I think that as an industry we should welcome this new paradigm: Nielsen as established measurement of television now getting into digital and a cross platform service versus comScore/Rentrak as established measurement of digital with TV measurement capabilities via STBs and a cross platform service. May the best solution become the standard!

The opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage/MyersBizNet management or associated bloggers.