Coming up short
TV audience and ratings data has made Nielsen an indispensable middleman between the advertising industry and the broadcast industry. Want to know how many people might see your advert in between re-runs of Seinfeld or Friends? You turn to Nielsen. Need to know how many people tuned into the Oscars live on TV? Nielsen.
But in a digital age, Nielsen has been somewhat left behind, as it tries to transition to measuring audiences in a digital world, with new streaming platforms seemingly cropping up every month.
That transition has been reflected in the company's share price, which has underperformed a US stock market that has more than tripled in value in the last 10 years, while Nielsen shares are relatively unchanged.
Whenever something major shifts, like linear TV moving to streaming, there's an entire ecosystem of businesses built around it, like measurement, that also get completely disrupted.
