Nexstar Media Group said it signed a long-term deal with Comscore to provide cross-platform audience measurement metrics for its local stations, its The CW network nationally and its digital assets.
The contract follows a process in which Nexstar invited measurement companies to submit proposals for improved audience measurement.
Nielsen, with its panel-based method, has been under pressure from rival measurement firms, including Comscore and iSpot.TV, which base their audience estimates on big data from set-top boxes and smart TVs.
“I think this is one of those inflection points in a very critical year,” Steve Bagdasarian, chief commercial officer at Comscore, told Broadcasting+Cable.
“It’s fantastic to work with a large-scale broadcaster and be their choice as it relates to currency measurement,” Bagdasarian said “I think they’re seeing what we see as well about the future of how media is going to be bought, sold and traded.”
Nexstar signed measurement deals with Nielsen in 2020 and Comscore in 2019.
After The CW added LIV Golf to its lineup in February, Nexstar hired iSpot.TV and VideoAmp to measure the audience across platforms and got numbers significantly different from Nielsen’s figures.
When Nexstar launched its request for proposal (RFP) process, it complained that it was not getting accurate audience numbers and that its audiences were undercounted across platforms, which costs advertising dollars.
“Comscore’s ability to provide us with total audience measurement metrics across our local television stations and websites, NewsNation, The CW Network, and The Hill, enables our cross-platform sales team to leverage our unique scale and reach to customize bespoke advertising and marketing solutions for our clients,” Michael Biard, Nexstar’s president and chief operating officer, said. “We look forward to offering our advertisers deeper insight into who is watching and interacting with our programming and when they are doing so, enabling them to focus on the audiences they want to reach.”
Nexstar declined to say to what degree it continues to work with Nielsen. And while Comscore had made inroads against Nielsen in local markets, Nielsen remains dominant nationally.
“Nielsen still remains, obviously, a significant incumbent,” Bagdasarian said.
And it's an incumbent that station managements have long complained about and is criticized for charging monopolistic rates for its services.
“I think that we are fairly priced for the capabilities that we have and I think the market has historically seen us from a price-to-value standpoint to be in a more favorable camp,” Comscore's Bagdasarian said.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Comscore says it provides measurement across 210 TV market. With its single methodology for both local and national measurement, Comscore’s audience numbers for all 41,704 zip codes roll up into a national audience total.
Nexstar expects Comscore to deliver more precise audience insights across screens to help advertisers optimize total reach and measure the holistic cross-platform campaign with de-duplicated in-flight monitoring of key metrics such as reach and frequency, incrementality, and co-viewing.
“Look, it's fantastic to work with a large scale broadcaster like Nexstar and be their choice as it relates to currency measurement,” Bagdasarian said.
Measurement is especially crucial in 2024, with the elections coming up, not to mention the Olympics.
“This is a signal that the concept of alternative currencies is going to continue to be a big topic.” he said. “I think it sends a strong signal to the market that there is the ability to think differently about how you might have invested your measurement resources in the past,” he said.
