Nielsen Bulks Up With Audience Analytics Purchase

The Nielsen Co. has purchased Audience Analytics and the firm’s Audience Watch software for an undisclosed sum, a move it said will significantly strengthen its ability to process, integrate, analyze and report large quantities of audience measurement data.

Nielsen has come under fire from TV networks dating back to last year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference and more recently at last month’s Future TV show for the time the company takes to provide its information to TV networks in particular.

Some TV network execs say they are swimming in a sea of audience viewing data and sorely need meaningful analysis of the information from outside companies, or help for their internal research groups in performing the analysis internally.

In Nielsen’s defense, however, the company is trying hard to keep pace with the evolving and fast-expanding number of options consumers have for consuming video, which extend far beyond traditional TV to video-on-demand (VoD), the Internet, DVRs and even gaming.

The company also is facing increasing competition in some of these areas from the likes of TiVo Inc., which has expanded far beyond a retailer of DVRs to provide audience measurement and analytics data on time-shifted TV viewing to all comers, including broadcast networks and advertisers.

The acquisition should help Nielsen immensely. The company, in roughly the last year, has acquired multiple companies to bolster its broad-ranging efforts and has launched several new services in that same period.

“The acquisition of Audience Analytics’ software and tools provides Nielsen with a powerful platform for new applications we can take to market immediately,” said Jim O’Hara, president of media product leadership for The Nielsen Co. “It not only gives us the ability to process and deliver set-top box data sets, but also enables us to report accurately that data down to very granular levels – whether second-by-second, household-by-household or even set-top box by set-top box.”

Further, he added, this tool allows for our respondent level tuning and demographic data to be analyzed along with these various set-top box data sets, providing our clients “access to the highest quality, most comprehensive analytical insights in the marketplace. This means Nielsen and its clients can receive, process and analyze complex, integrated data, faster and more comprehensively than ever before.”

Nielsen said that Mark Cannon, Audience Analytics founder and leader, will join the company as senior vice president of analytics technology. He will lead an advanced applications team to sustain and expand this technology across a growing number of complex data sets, and provide client support in developing the analytics techniques required to arrive at solutions.

“In today's dynamic technology environment, companies can only maintain their marketplace advantage through continuous investment, strategic alliances, and leveraging human capital,” said Mitchell Habib, executive vice president of Nielsen’s Global Business Services. “This acquisition is another example that the ‘New Nielsen’ will maintain focus and continue to bring the best technology assets to bear for our clients.”

Audience Analytics www.audiencewatch.com
The Nielsen Co. www.nielsen.com
TiVo Inc. www.tivo.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines