Nielsen's $2 billion DoubleVerify acquisition is a big play for CMOs

CMOs: Get fresh to section much income pitches from Nielsen.

The TV ratings giant amazed the advertisement manufacture by announcing plans to bargain DoubleVerify for $2.15 cardinal — and sent chins wagging pinch basking takes astir the implications.

At stake: trustworthy data.

CMOs dangle connected information to trade their strategies, but it's often patchy and unreliable. That's why they request reliable auditors to double-check — aliases double-verify, if you will — those numbers. For CMOs, this woody could simplify assemblage measurement and advertisement verification, but consolidation would mean greater attraction of powerfulness nether Nielsen and 1 less independent player.

Eric Salama, erstwhile CEO of data patient Kantar, told maine the woody signals Nielsen's intent to move further into helping CMOs scheme and allocate their media budgets. That, successful turn, would mean building much nonstop relationships pinch advertisers alternatively than chiefly serving media owners and agencies.

"As an advertiser, erstwhile you deliberation astir attribution and planning, you don't deliberation of Nielsen, really," Salama said.

Building a azygous measurement currency

DoubleVerify made its sanction helping advertisers guarantee their integer ads are viewable, free of fraud, and served alongside suitable content. It has since expanded into the advertisement capacity space, successful areas for illustration run optimization and outcomes measurement.

DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski said successful a connection that the combo would present "a azygous rate that scores media connected some assemblage transportation and media situation quality."

A azygous rate besides intends placing religion successful a azygous referee to find what constitutes "quality" media.

In acquiring DoubleVerify, Nielsen would ain some the devices that measurement an advertiser's scope and those that trial the purity of their media buys, Nomad Foods CMO Justin Billingsley wrote on LinkedIn.

"Together they are the 2 facts that fto a purchaser spot what a seller claims, and from 2027 they will beryllium wrong a azygous backstage institution whose ain accounts cipher extracurricular tin read," Billingsley said.

DoubleVerify, antecedently publically traded, will clasp its sanction and abstracted firm building arsenic portion of Nielsen, which is privately held. (No NielsenVerify yet!)

That separation mightiness easiness immoderate concerns astir imaginable conflicts, but it could besides make the benefits of the operation harder for advertisers to spot — astatine slightest successful the short term.

Ad measurement goes private

Once the woody closes, expected adjacent year, there'll beryllium moreover little nationalist financial scrutiny of the advertisement measurement abstraction arsenic DoubleVerify exits the nationalist markets. Nielsen itself has been privately owned by a backstage equity consortium since 2022. Meanwhile, DoubleVerify's closest rival, Integral Ad Science, was taken backstage by PE patient Novacap past year.

The not-so-small matter of integrating the 2 companies erstwhile the woody closes could unfastened the doorway for rivals to pounce, touting their independence.

"Mediaocean and Peer39 will beryllium absorbing to watch," said Jay Friedman, cofounder of the adtech and martech find level CartographAI, referring to measurement rivals that could return advantage.

Will Luttrell, the erstwhile CTO of DoubleVerify rival IAS, said that while accepted contented sometimes holds that backstage equity is wherever invention goes to die, the other tin besides beryllium true.

"It's an opportunity to make the longer-term bets and bigger swings that quarterly net scrutiny whitethorn not allow," Luttrell, who now runs the cybersecurity startup Honeycake, told me.

IAS, for example, hired Lidiane Jones arsenic its CEO past month.

"They are replacing personification pinch a gross inheritance successful the apical chair pinch a bona fide software engineer," Luttrell said of the caller IAS CEO. "It's difficult to support semipermanent occurrence without a method personification successful the apical chair, particularly successful a competitory manufacture that requires changeless reinvention for illustration adtech."

Marketers person spent years trying to make fragmented measurement systems activity amended together truthful they tin understand some who their ads reached and whether those impressions were really valuable. Nielsen-DoubleVerify promises immoderate of the unification marketers are looking for, but the trade-off is simply a bigger reliance connected a azygous institution to supply it.