This Is Huge! Nielsen Under Pressure for Significant Discrepancies in TV Measurements
Portland, OR — Rentrak Corporation (NASDAQ: RENT), the leader in multi-screen media measurement serving the advertising, television and entertainment industries, today announced the company has signed a TV Essentials contract with Univision Communications Inc.. The deal includes Univision, TeleFutura, Galavisión, Univision Deportes, Univision tlnovelas, ForoTV, Bandamax, De Película, Película Clásico, Clásico TV, Ritmoson and Telehit.
Univision is the leading media company connecting the more than 50 million Hispanic Americans in the United States through engaging content across television, radio, digital and mobile platforms.
“We look forward to working with Rentrak to gather greater insights into the rapidly growing and diversifying Hispanic broadcast and cable network space,” said Ceril Shagrin, Executive Vice President Audience Measurement Innovation and Analytics Univision Communications Inc.
“We are very pleased to have the Hispanic category leader turn to Rentrak to better understand their viewership trends for its growing list of Hispanic broadcast and cable networks,” said Chris Wilson, President National Television.
According to http://Paidcontent.org, “After enjoying a ratings monopoly during television’s first six decades, Nielsen increasingly finds itself challenged by upstart competitors as the TV research game evolves to more accurately measure audiences spread across digital viewing devices.” In addition to Univision, Rentrak has contracted with Crown Media Holdings, operator of the Hallmark Channel.
“A report comparing Nielsen and Rentrak measurement of [selected TV programming] performance revealed significant discrepancies. For example, Nielsen reported a whopping 22.6 percent viewership drop for the channel’s Monday-Friday lineup, while Rentrak said it was only around 12.7 percent,” stated Paidcontent.org.
Blogged BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield: “Beyond illustrating that Viacom, and more importantly, Philippe Dauman are not crazy, the more important takeaway from the data discussed above is that content creators, ad buyers and brands should all be utilizing multiple data sources versus simply buying ad time solely on Nielsen metrics alone.”
TV Essentials is Rentrak’s census-based television ratings measurement service that provides daily measurement of all TV networks nationally and at a granular level for TV stations in all 210 media markets nationwide. The service incorporates information from over 20 million televisions and is the only fully integrated system of detailed satellite, telco and cable TV viewing data commercially available.
About Rentrak Corporation
Rentrak (NASDAQ: RENT) is a global digital media measurement and research company, serving the most recognizable companies in the entertainment industry. Rentrak is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with additional U.S. and international offices. For more information on Rentrak, please visit www.rentrak.com.
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