Comscore said it named Dr. Michael Vinson as chief research officer.

Vinson has been with the company for 11 years as senior VP for analytics strategy, starting at Rentrak, before it was acquired by Comscore in 2016. 

He will continue to guide the development of Comscore methodologies across all platforms, as he has since 2019, working along side chief product officer David Algranati.

"At this pivotal moment in media, Comscore is building the next generation of cross-platform privacy-focused audience measurement that the industry has been demanding,” said Comscore CEO Bill Livek. “Michael is a true data science visionary and change agent. In his new role, Michael will be leading some of the smartest analytics experts and data scientists in the industry and I'm confident in his leadership and excited about the innovation that he will bring to Comscore .”

Before joining Rentrak, Vinson was with Starcom MediaVest Group and erinMedia.

Vinson holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Chicago and completed his postdoctoral work at Syracuse University in Physics, where he won a Fulbright Scholarship to teach and research computational physics at Yarmouk University in Jordan.

comScore, which has been trying to put its financial house in order since accounting issues cropped up, said it has formed a special committed to do a long-term strategic review of the company.

The review process is being driven by Starboard Value LP, which owns 4.9% of comScore stock.

Related: ComScore Stock Plunges 30% as Accounting Woes Continue

comScore also said it has delayed reporting its financial results and plans to settle lawsuits against it for $27.2 million in cash, which would come from the company’s insurers, and $82.8 million in stock.

The media measurement company has not released financial statement since its accounting issues emerged. That has resulted in the comScore’s shares being delisted from public exchanges. The company said Monday its efforts to restate its earnings for 2015, 2106 and 2017 in March 2018 at the earliest. The company noted that it is also working on preparing its financial statements from 2017.

Earlier this year, the company said that the cost of the investigation and redoing its financial statements was about $30 million.

Related: comScore Considers Stock — and Strategy

“We regret the need to extend further the date for filing our restated financials and we share the frustration of our stockholders,” said CEO Gian Fulgoni. “However, to ensure the completeness and accuracy of the past four years of financial information we will be reporting and to ensure that we are also able to include audited financial statements for 2017, the Board has determined that additional time is needed. In the meantime, I firmly believe in comScore's future based on the compelling opportunities we see for organic growth within our existing and new products.

The financial irregularities came to light after comScore acquired Rentrak, a move that some saw as having the potential to make the new combined company a challenger to Nielsen, which dominates the media measurement industry.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Beleagured comScore will now be hoping its future more resembles Charter Communications’s past than that of most media companies that have suffered through having their stock delisted by NASDAQ.

Even before the delisting, the ratings-measurement firm — which has been trying to unravel an accounting quagmire for nearly a year — took another big hit after it disclosed it wouldn’t meet a Feb. 23 deadline to file financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also said it could not guarantee it could meet the next filing target of this summer. Shares in comScore plunged nearly 30% early on Feb. 6 after the delay was announced.

NASDAQ’s hand was forced, and the exchange said it would delist the stock on Feb. 8.

Losing a NASDAQ designation is never good for a stock. While comScore began trading on the over-the-counter market on Feb. 8 — it closed at $22.98 per share that day — OTC stocks are typically lightly traded. Com-Score shares are down about 43% since March 2016.

IRREGULARITIES AND DELAYS

comScore’s troubles date back to March of 2016, when it first said it had been notified of possible irregularities. The company later said the problems stemmed from a practice of booking non-cash sales — mainly barter transactions — as revenue and restated results for the three years from 2013 to 2015.

The company lowered 2015 revenue to $339.9 million (about 8% below what was originally reported); its loss from operations for that year is now $10.8 million, about four times larger than previously stated.

comScore restated revenue for 2013 to $312.9 million instead of $329.2 million and for 2014 to $283.6 million instead of $286.9 million. comScore also said barter deals could have been used to inflate revenue figures that were the basis for compensation awards to top executives, including then-CEO and co-founder Serge Matta.

Matta resigned in October, replaced by cofounder Gian Fulgoni, a board member who assumed the helm on Aug. 10.

comScore’s delisting comes about a year after the ratings firm’s big move to merge with rival measurement company Rentrak in a deal valued at about $780 million. Combining Rentrak’s set-top box data measurement expertise with comScore’s digital knowhow was, at the time, seen as a viable alternative to ratings measurement juggernaut Nielsen. Instead, comScore has been bogged down sorting through mounting problems just as the measurement market is heating up.

Fulgoni said in a statement: “While we are disappointed with the pending delisting, our growth prospects remain robust. We have an extensive portfolio of valuable services that are needed by our more than 3,000 clients and we compete in fast-growing markets. We remain focused on measuring what matters for our clients to make audiences, consumer behavior and advertising more valuable for our clients — across all platforms. We are confident that we have the right strategy and team in place to execute on our company’s exciting vision.”

“The thing that troubles me is that they weren’t able to resolve this,” Telsey Advisory Group media analyst Tom Eagan, who follows comScore, said. “The amount of non-monetary revenue is small, about 7% to 8% [of total sales].”

That leaves the question of whether the problem goes deeper, or if the auditors just weren’t confident in signing off.

In December, Nielsen, which has been testing its Total Audience Measurement product with programmers, received a major setback when NBCUniversal chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships Linda Yaccarino said in a letter that was made public that TAM wasn’t ready to be released and that it did more harm than good.

That would have seemed to open a big door to rival measurement companies. But so far, that hasn’t happened.

“They [comScore] are in a competitive, fast-paced market. You can’t take a vacation from that,” Eagan said. “My concern is that they get behind.”

FEW GOOD COMEBACK STORIES

There is a long list of media companies that have been delisted from NASDAQ. Some, like Charter Communications, which was delisted in March 2009, have come back even stronger than ever. After emerging from bankruptcy in November 2009, Charter, with a clean balance sheet and a new ability to invest in the business, returned to the NASDAQ on Sept. 14, 2010, opening at $38 per share. More than six years later, after major investments by cable legend John Malone and its acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks last year, Charter stock closed at $325.73 per share on Feb. 8.

But that’s the exception. More often than not, media companies that have fallen off the NASDAQ have either been acquired by other companies at bargain prices — like Gemstar-TV Guide International (delisted in 2002 and sold to MacroVision — now TiVo — in 2008) and Terayon Communication System (delisted in 2006 and sold to Motorola in 2007) — or disappeared altogether.

Eagan said comScore still has a lot of cash, so bankruptcy isn’t a concern at the moment. But he added that other companies are beginning to encroach on the space — private company Moat has made inroads with its Attention Analytics products and Group M and industry group the Video Advertising Bureau have announced plans to develop their own cross-measurement metric.

“My biggest concern is if they continue to lose talented individuals,” Eagan said. “But can they come back? Yes, I believe they can.”

CHART: Delisted A-Listers
Several media stocks have been delisted from the NASDAQ stock exchange over the years, but few have managed to work their way back to favor.

Company                                                  Date Delisted                                            Outcome

Charter Communications. . . . . . . . . . March 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . Filed for bankruptcy in 2009;
                                                                                                                          returned to NASDAQ in 2010;
                                                                                                                         buys Time Warner Cable in 2015

Terayon Communication Systems. . .   . . . April 2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..  .. . . Sold to Motorola in 2007

Gemstar-TV Guide International. . . . . . . . . . 2002 . . . . . . . .   . . . . . . . . . . . . Sold to MacroVision (now TiVo) in 2008

Classic Communications. . . . . . . . . . . . . December 2001 . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . Reached management
                                                                                                                    agreement with Cequel III in 2003
SOURCE : Published reports

comScore, moving into the TV market, said that the amount of time viewers spent watching was up 7% in fourth-quarter 2015.

comScore’s 2015 Cross-Platform Future in Focus report said that in viewing households, 1,004 hours were spent watching live TV, up from 936 hours a year ago. Time spent watching programs on DVRs up to 15 days after they originally aired also rose, to 356 hours from 332 hours.

“The availability of more viewing options appealing to a wider array of tastes, in addition to the continued expansion of premium, original, scripted programming on cable networks, has likely contributed to this effect,” the comScore report said.

Earlier this year, comScore, which specialized in measuring Web usage, acquired Rentrak, which uses set-top box data to gauge TV viewing.

Among millennials, time spent viewing live TV has been eclipsed by use of desktop computers and mobile devices. Live TV still accounts for 47% of time spent.

“It’s possible that digital share of time spent among 25-54 year-olds might also soon surpass live TV," the report said.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Shares of measurement giant comScore plunged more than 30% on Monday after the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that its board of directors was recently notified of certain potential accounting issues.

In the filing, comScore said the Audit Committee of its board of directors received a message “regarding certain potential accounting matters,” on Feb. 19 and immediately began a review with the help of independent counsel and advisers. On  Feb. 29 comScore filed for a 15-day extension to file its 10-K annual report with the SEC.

While the Audit Committee continues to work on the problem, it notified the board on March 5 that it did not expect to complete its review before March 15. That caused the board to ask for a further extension to file its 10-K and to postpone its Investor Day, scheduled for March 16. In addition, comScore also suspended its stock repurchase program, adding that the buyback program will be reevaluated after the company completes its internal review and files its 10-K.

Comscore stock took it on the nose Monday, falling as much as 33% ($13.23 each) to $27.48 per share. The stock was trading at $29.11 each at 11:28 a.m., down 28.5% ($11.60 each).

ComScore completed its merger with set-top box measurement company Rentrak on Jan. 29. The deal was valued at  about $779 million and was touted as creating a stronger No.2 competitor to industry leader Nielsen. 

comScore, which completed its acquisition of Rentrak in January, swung to a profit in the fourth quarter.

Net income was $4.4 million, or 11 cents a share, in the quarter, compared to a $2.7 million loss a year ago.

Revenue rose 10% to $97.7 million. U.S. Revenue was up 11.5% to $71 million.

The combination with Rentrak should make comScore a more formidable competitor to Nielsen in the media audience measurement business. The company said it plans to move quickly rolling out new products that combine comScore’s web measurement products with Rentrak’s set-top box-based TV ratings.

Read more at B&C.

RELATED:Campaign 2016’s Early Winner: Cable | Election 2016: The Apps Campaign

Next year is shaping up to set records for local cable political advertising, just as this year has been about presidential candidates drawing historic TV audiences to their debates.

The debate-viewing phenomenon started with interest in Donald Trump and has maintained momentum for both Republican and Democratic clashes. On the ad-sales side, the growth is driven by data, data and more data.

Kantar Media has estimated political candidates will spend about $4.4 billion on TV ads in 2016, with about $3.3 billion going to cable networks and $800 million of that earmarked for local cable ads, a 23% increase from the $650 million spent on local cable in 2012.

It seems that almost every candidate, regardless of political affiliation, is recognizing the value of local cable as a vehicle to get their message out to precisely those they want to hear it. President Obama’s campaign successfully tapped Rentrak set-top box data in 2008 and 2012 to figure out which shows and networks its voters were watching.

Now, according to Rentrak president of national television Chris Wilson, there is even more data to exploit.

Some candidates buy ads during the 4:30 a.m. local news, rather than in primetime, because the earlier broadcast has a higher concentration of the voters they want to reach, Wilson said.

Obama also taught campaigns to buy ads on multiple networks and in markets and on channels where no other spots from competing candidates are running. His 2012 campaign bought ad time on more than 100 networks, while other candidates averaged about 20 to 25.

“He went so much deeper,” Wilson said. “And he had 100% of the noise in areas where [Republican candidate Mitt] Romney didn’t run ads. Voters weren’t getting a counterpoint.”

At cable operator-owned NCC Media, director of political strategy Tim Kay said current campaigns so far are using, on average, 35 more networks than in 2011, including Food Network, HGTV, AMC and sports outlets.

In the past, local newscasts were a top priority. That isn’t necessarily the case anymore.

“They were looking for frequency and saturation in the marketplace,” Kay said. “Now, they’re looking for these nuggets of individual voters across the television networks. They’re finding they’re not watching the local news.”

Sports is a draw, especially for the live-viewing factor. Strong prospects include the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in March, typically followed in states with heated primaries, and Big Ten Network and SEC Network football in key states like Florida or Ohio ahead of the general election.

Comcast is continuing to offer household-addressable ads (currently within on-demand programs) and satellite-TV providers DirecTV and Dish Network are in the second year of D2, the household-addressable election ad program reaching into more than 20 million homes.

The 2014 races brought in ads from more than 175 campaigns, mostly in statewide races, while the two satellite-TV providers were focused on getting systems in place and raising interest, “which was easy,” Joe Hockenjos, vice president at AT&T AdWorks, said. (AT&T now owns DirecTV.)

Popular targets now include party-affiliated voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, he said. Some candidates weeks ago booked ad time via D2 in the two states right up to the New Hampshire Primary and Iowa Caucuses. Business is expected to be good at least through Super Tuesday on March 1, Hockenjos said. “For our product, it’s high, high demand,” he said.

Whereas candidates used to hold off until the primaries were coming up soon, they are booking well earlier, Kay said. During the 2014 midterm elections, some Republican candidates bought ads a year in advance.

“They’re trying to build up a message earlier to try to persuade the audiences,” Kay said of early ad buyers. “Those last few weeks that used to be about persuasion are now are about [voter] turnout.”

Kent Gibbons contributed to this story.

Rentrak said it has inked a TV measurement agreement with KNSD-TV, the NBC-owned station in San Diego, expanding local TV ties between the companies.

Other NBC-owned stations that have signed on with Rentrak include KNBC Los Angeles; KXAS Dallas-Ft. Worth;  WTVJ Miami-Ft. Lauderdale; and WRC Washington D.C.

Additionally, KNSD and the other NBC client stations are using Rentrak Auto and Political Advanced Demographics to sell the value and relevance of their audiences, not just its size.

“We are excited to add Rentrak as we are always looking for ways to maximize our customers investment with NBC 7,” said KNSD president and general manager Dick Kelley, in a statement. “Rentrak’s Advanced Political and Automotive Demographics give us the tools we need to provide our advertisers with the best and most relevant audience information available.”

Anyone who has been around the media business for any length of time has heard the song before – [insert calendar year here] is the year we will finally experience the joy of true cross platform ratings measurement.  But at the risk of having to eat crow in the next six months, 2016 is beginning to shape up as the year it finally happens.

In a recent research report, top media and telecom analyst Tom Eagan of Telsey Advisory Group laid out the case for 2016 as the Year of Measurement, and it seems as if the pieces are finally begin falling  into place.

According to Eagan, with the Summer Olympics and a Presidential election slated for 2016, an additional $3.5 billion in incremental ad revenue will flow into the market, increasing “pressure for TV networks to demonstrate the benefits of their platform despite declining ratings and low-level targeting ability.”

That makes sense – with TV ad revenue growth dwindling cross the board, content providers have been scrambling for ways to take up the slack, and all have pointed to the absence of a reliable way to measure what is becoming an increasingly large audience that watches programming outside of the living room.

Add that to mounting evidence that cord cutting is no longer a mere annoyance to pay TV companies – pay TV continues to lose share as housing growth climbs, which means either no one’s watching or a growing number of people are finding other than traditional means to watch shows.

There are a growing number of companies that claim to have the full measurement answer. Rentrak has gained a lot of traction in the past few years with its set-top based measurement and has landed deals with broadcasters and ad buyers by the bucketful. And with new products like MMX Multi-Platform, MMX Mobile and vCE, comScore has  also has been at the forefront of multi-platform measurement.

Nielsen has been taking it on the chin as content providers line up to criticize the lack of a new measurement currency, but the industry standard-bearer has not been sitting idly by either.

Eagan noted that in its second quarter conference call July 28, Nielsen indicated that recent contract renewals with entertainment companies included expanded measurement requirements, which he saw as a “signal that they were preparing for a cross platform measurement.”

He added that with the roll out of new services like  DCR (Digital Content Ratings), its OTT audience measurement deal with Roku; and VOD measurement in the second half of this year, Nielsen “appears positioned to create a cross-platform currency.”

Creating that new currency is vital.

“The successful launch of these new services, will of course, be critical as will the market's (and the players') willingness to coalesce around a common currency,” Eagan wrote.

NEW YORK – Rentrak vice chairman and CEO Bill Livek believes the difference between video on demand and primetime linear TV is a lot like gap between cooking with a microwave and an oven – food tastes better in the oven, but “you can’t beat the speed.”

Livek, whose company makes its living measuring TV viewing habits, said at the Multichannel News B&C On Demand Summit here that consumers, in an effort to accommodate their busier lifestyles are making the trade off between watching commercials on the VOD platform for the convenience of merely clicking a button to watch their favorite shows when they want them.

 And the numbers back him up. According to Rentrak, a bout 57 million households have access to VOD, up by about 2 million in the past year. More importnatly, he said, time spent watching VOD has risen to 9.3 hours per month, a bout double the time spend just five years ago.

How viewers spend their time is a key metric, Livek added, using the Fox hit primetime show Empire as an example. Livek said that after Empire’s first five episodes, 83% of the viewing was done after day 3 of original air. Toward the tail end of the season, more than 50% of the viewership was done after day 5.

“This is how VOD is changing the economics,” Livek said. “After the third day the majority of viewership is happening; in primetime, content with the Big Five [broadcast networks], five or seven days almost half of viewership is cumed up.”

Livek argued that despite sentiment to the contrary, TV viewership is essentially unchanged. People, he said, are watching just as much or more TV, they are just watching it on different devices and at different times. It is for that reason, he added, that advertisers and networks should look more closely not just at the shows that attract the audiences they want to reach, but the specific times within those programs. According to Rentrak data, different age groups watch primetime VOD shows at different times.

“Time as a demographic does matter,” Livek said, adding that in general, 50% of viewing is occurring five days or more after original air.

Rentrak corporate president Cathy Hetzel said the measurement company is working with cable industry ad consortium Canoe and Comcast to apply age and gender information to VOD titles. That should eventually expand to other distributors.

“There is going to be a lot more talk about this in the near future,” Hetzel said.

iSpot.tv, a startup that tracks national TV ads and correlates digital responses in real-time, said it has raised a $21.9 million B round led by Insight Venture Partners, with help from existing investor, Madrona Venture Group.

With the new round factored in, the three-year-old Seattle-based company has raised about $27.5 million so far.

Sean Muller, CEO of iSpot.tv, said the company will use the fresh funds to accelerate product development, add new capabilities to its TV ad measurement platform, and to expand its employee base, which is now at about 60, and expected to climb to 100 by the end of the year.

“We’re optimizing for growth,” Muller said, noting that iSpot.tv was cash-flow positive in the first quarter of 2015.

iSpot.tv’s platform uses real-time data to help its programming and brand partners monitor and modify their ad campaigns while they’re still in flight, tying in digital activity to help to determine and optimize the effectiveness of TV adverting.

iSpot.tv’s platform, for example, is designed to track how consumers react in the digital realm after a spot airs on regular TV. That additional measurement that occurs after the paid TV ad runs – something the company refers to as “earned digital activity” -- could include Google searches, replaying the ad on YouTube, or sharing or discussing the ad on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

“It’s getting more difficult to understand what you’re getting for your TV buys,” Muller said, noting that tracking that digital activity helps its partners determine the effectiveness of their TV campaigns and make adjustments on the fly.

While there are several companies that measure TV and digital activity, including Nielsen, Rentrak, comScore and Kantar Media (Kantar’s U.S. assets are now part of Rentrak), iSpot.tv is trying to differentiate by tracking measurement data at scale and in real-time.

Founded in 2012, iSpot.tv said it has more than 150 clients. Brands and programmers that work with the company include ESPN, The Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures, Paramount, Dish Network, NBCUniversal, American Express, Lincoln, Microsoft, Volvo, Sprint, and T-Mobile, among others.

Rentrak said it has notched a deal to provide TV ratings and VOD measurement capabilities to Game Show Network, claiming the deal will help the network make more efficient ad buys for its clients.

“GSN consistently ranks within the top 25 percent of all broadcast and cable networks and Rentrak ratings information provides us the ability to highlight the unique quality of our audience,” GSN’s VP, research strategy, Michael Michell, said in a statement. “Rentrak’s granular TV measurement service will play a key role in supporting our research needs across the board.”    

“We are excited to have GSN subscribe to our TV services and we look forward to helping them advance their business,” added Chris Wilson, Rentrak’s president of national television.

Notably, the deal comes almost a month after Rentrak teamed with Visible World subsidiary AudienceXpress to establish a “data-rich” programmatic TV ad platform. 

Rentrak said its TV ratings service gathers data from more than 30 million TVs and VOD viewing across more than 117 million televisions in the U.S. and Canada. 

Set-top box measurement company Rentrak said it had reached an agreement with Tribune Broadcasting to furnish its full suite of local market ratings services, including its automotive and political Advanced Demographics, for Tribune stations in 33 markets. Rentrak has been furnishing ratings information to Tribune’s stations in Cleveland and Des Moines since 2012, and renews them as part of this agreement.

“In today’s rapidly changing media landscape, our partnership with Rentrak will provide us with consumer behavior insight from a significant measurement footprint in each market,” said Larry Wert, said Tribune Broadcasting president of broadcast media Larry Wert ina statement. “Rentrak’s data will help our stations make more informed decisions and provide our clients with detailed audience viewing information.”

Tribune Broadcasting is part of Tribune Media and owns and operates 42 television stations in 33 markets across the country, including WPIX in New York, KTLA in Los Angeles and WGN in Chicago.

“We are very excited by our new partnership with Tribune Broadcasting and are eager to work closely with all of their stations in accurately measuring their strong and varied audiences,” said Rentrak’s executive vice president of local television Steve Walsh in a statement.

Opening a window to multiscreen usage trends, comScore has launched Video Metrix Multi-Platform, a syndicated product that, it claims, can provided the unduplicated measurement of video viewing across PCs and laptops, smartphones, tablets and a growing variety of OTT devices.

comScore’s new product, launched Tuesday for the U.S., targets content owners, media agencies and advertisers. Billed as an “evolution” of the company’s Video Metrix digital video measurement platform and a component of its overarching Total Video Initiative, the new multi-platform approach will enable clients to sell, plan and buy digital video “using TV-comparable metrics for both video content and advertising,” comScore said. 

comScore’s announcement, made as companies such as Rentrak and Nielsen are looking to provide a detailed look at multiscreen viewing, included support from three digital video service companies -- Hulu, Crackle and PBS Digital.

“As content continues to flow across an increasing number of screens, content owners and advertisers need a consistent, trusted way to transact in a platform-agnostic world,” said Serge Matta, CEO of comScore, in a statement.  “The introduction of Video Metrix Multi-Platform is another milestone in our long history of digital video measurement innovation.”

"With our many distribution platform partners, Hulu users create hundreds of ways to watch Hulu. Hulu has always followed our users wherever they go – we need the measurement community to follow them too,” Peter Naylor, SVP of advertising sales at Hulu, added.

“With content flowing across screens, a new approach to video measurement was needed to better understand how and where video is being viewed – especially on OTT,” Eric Berger, EVP digital networks, Sony Pictures Television, and the GM of Crackle, said.

Rentrak has received patents for its method of calculating exact commercial ratings and it means to generating ratings when the return path data is incomplete.

The Nielsen research competitor says the U.S. patents afford it and its clients an advantage when it comes to gauging the new ways television programs are consumed.

“Once again, the U.S. Patent Office has recognized Rentrak’s unique inventions that help it measure TV everywhere,” said Rentrak vice chairman and CEO Bill Livek.

U.S. Patent 8,887,188 is for a method that secures Rentrak’s intellectual property rights around “Exact Commercial Ratings.”  Rentrak provides, to the second, the rating for national commercials to give advertisers precise accountability. That differs than Nielsen's average of commercials in a pod, according to the company.

The government awarded Rentrak U.S. Patent 8,893,165 for its method and system that compensates for problems with return path TV data storage. In some cases, a return path TV is unable to store all the channel changes before sending them back for processing by Rentrak. This patent detects when this problem occurs, enabling Rentrak to fix the problem quickly.

Ratings measurement company Rentrak said it has expanded its agreement to provide local market TV ratings data to Weigel Broadcasting, adding stations in Chicago and Milwaukee. According to Rentrak, the company will provide local TV ratings for stations WCIU (IND), WWME (MeTV) and WMEU (IND) in Chicago, and WDJT (CBS), WMLW (IND), WBME (MeTV) and WYTU (TEL) in Milwaukee. Rentrak already provides ratings and Automotive Advanced Demographic information to Weigel’s stations in South Bend—WBND (ABC), WMYS (MyNet) and WCWW (CW)—and renews them as a part of this expansion agreement. “We started our partnership with Rentrak three years ago in South Bend and use them as our sales, programming and marketing currency every day,” said Weigel executive vice president of sales John Hendricks in a statement. “Their massive measurement footprint, with hundreds or even thousands of reporting homes in every ZIP code, provides us with the reliability and stability that we and our advertisers need to provide schedules that deliver the audience levels that we sell. Rentrak’s automotive demographics are exactly what clients want to see to better understand the value of our audiences and to reach actual auto customers.” The deal extends the Rentrak ratings relationship to all Weige owned stations. In addition, Weigel includes Memorable Entertainment Television (MeTV), a digital broadcaster that offers classic TV shows over the air and via cable and satellite, the Movies! Network in partnership with Fox Television stations, Heroes & Icons and the new DECADES Network in partnership with the CBS Television Station Group. “Weigel’s South Bend stations have really hit it out of the park using Rentrak as a selling currency over the last three years, and we are excited to now have the opportunity to bring similar success to their stations in Chicago and Milwaukee,” said Rentrak’s executive vice president of local market television Steve Walsh in a statement.

Rentrak said it has been granted U.S. Patent No. 8,863,166 for a method and system that measures the status of return path TVs – or in simpler terms: it knows when the TV is off but the set-top is on.

According to Rentrak, because it often happens that a set-top box is left on when the television is turned off, this process is crucial to the measurement of viewing based on return-path TVs. Rentrak’s approach includes more than 10,000 statistical models to identify specific viewing situations.

“This is great news for Rentrak and the video industry,” said Rentrak’s Vice Chairman and CEO Bill Livek in a statement. “This patent recognizes the fact that only Rentrak has the intellectual property and years of experience to precisely measure TV viewing everywhere. This technology is an integral part of providing massive and passive television measurement for our clients.”

Rentrak vice chairman and CEO Bill Livek has one person to thank for the moment that put the fledgling Nielsen competitor on the map: Barack Obama.

It was the 2012 presidential campaign, after all, in which President Obama’s handlers selectively purchased advertising on networks based primarily on set-top box data, getting the message to young voters by buying time on shows not traditionally associated with that demographic.

“Obama put us on the map,” Livek said. “They [the Obama campaign] bought TV very, very differently. They bought television shows that you wouldn’t buy if you seek an 18-plus audience or a voting-age audience.

“Here they were buying programming like The Andy Griffith Show on TV Land, inventory that was completely mispriced for political,” he recalled. “That story replicates itself time and time again in other verticals.”

Rentrak, a 34-year-old company based in Portland, Ore., had already signed a few big clients, but Obama’s win insured a bluechip list of TV giants, including NBC, CBS, Fox and ABC owned-and-operated stations across the country.

And the list keeps growing. Last week, Rentrak struck two deals with units of ad behemoth WPP: An agreement to purchase the U.S.-based TV assets of its Kantar Media division, as well as a deal with ad buyer GroupM to provide local and national data tools. The deals come literally on the heels of an agreement with Zenith Media, a unit of communications behemoth Publicis Groupe, which announced it will be testing Rentrak data in several marekts as the basis for planning and buying local ads for Zenith’s clients. With those deals, Rentrak says it has contracts with all of the largest ad agency holding companies.

The Kantar Media deal, valued at about $98 million in Rentrak stock, will give the company a stronger presence in local and national TV measurement. With GroupM, Rentrak gains a client with about $105 billion in global ad billings that also shapes the relationship between TV networks and advertisers — GroupM led the push for C-plus-3 ratings, now the industry standard, in 2007.

At Rentrak’s Oct. 9 Investor Day in New York, GroupM global chairman Irwin Gotlieb hinted that the Rentrak deal could signal further changes in the overall industry.

Speaking via satellite from San Francisco, Gotlieb said that the TV landscape has changed dramatically over the past 10 to 20 years, yet viewership is measured using technology developed 50 to 60 years ago.

“If we’re going to have addressable TV, if we’re going to understand the intersection between media consumption and product consumption, if we’re going to have highly refined targeting, we have to move from sample methodology to census-based data,” Gotlieb said. “There just isn’t a choice in the matter.”

RAMPING UP RATINGS

With these deals and more, Rentrak is on the cusp of moving its TV ratings business to the next level. The company estimates that its TV-ratings business, which in 2009 accounted for less than $1 million in revenue, will top $56 million in fiscal 2015, an 80% increase from fiscal 2014’s $31 million in sales and growing the number of TV stations and cable networks it calls clients exponentially.

Wall Street is taking notice. Rentrak stock, once thought primarily as a takeover play (largely by bigger Nielsen), is now being bought on fundamentals and potential for future organic growth. The shares, which traded at about $72.07 per share on Oct. 9, are up 90% since the beginning of the year and have more than quadrupled from about $17 each five years ago.

New customers and new products on the horizon — including a planned overnight-ratings offering that would be a direct challenge to Nielsen — are expected to fuel that growth.

Rentrak initially made its mark by offering movie box-office results and video-on-demand viewership data, but its TV-measurement business will be the growth driver for the foreseeable future, Needham & Co. media analyst Laura Martin predicted.

Rentrak has added 117 television stations as clients in the last four quarters, and represents about 60 station groups with a total of 350 broadcast properties. Roughly 90 cable networks use Rentrak data — mostly channels too small to be rated by Nielsen — but that is about to change.

Rentrak could grow its cable client list to about 400 channels in the near future, Martin estimated, including some of the top 100 channels currently rated by Nielsen. And one of Rentrak’s biggest advantages — its services are priced at about 25% of Nielsen’s rate card — is helping drive growth, she said. About 100 of Rentrak’s TV-station clients have “stopped paying Nielsen entirely,” Martin estimated.

Rentrak’s emergence also is a signal of how much the media measurement game has changed in the past several years. Once the exclusive domain of Nielsen, whose overnight, age and gender ratings data have determined which shows live or die since the beginning of television, advertisers are seeking more detailed information on who is watching.

‘BIG DATA’ NEEDS

The advent of TV Everywhere, online and mobile video and social media has fueled the rising need for big data — demographics, household income and buying habits gleaned from millions of set-top boxes and other sources.

Unlike Nielsen, which gathers data from a sample of about 20,000 to 25,000 households around the country handpicked for the privilege, Rentrak gets its info from 26 million homes, representing about 60 million TV sets, from satellite TV providers DirecTV and Dish Network, telco AT&T and such cable operators as Charter Communications and Cox Communications.

Rentrak then takes that information, filters, crunches and extrapolates it, and combines it with such data points as household income and retail buying habits to present a total profile to clients. So while some advertisers may be content on getting data on whether a show is being watched by a key male or female age demographic, Rentrak customers are shown which shows are being watched by households with incomes over $200,000 annually who have bought a BMW in the past five years. It is a level of granularity that is becoming more and more commonplace.

While Nielsen’s data sample is smaller, it is also more representative, according to the company. And through its Buy and Watch segments, Nielsen too can provide clients — for an additional cost — with more detailed buying habit and income information.

Nielsen also has embraced social media: It tracks mobile TV viewing via a relationship with Facebook and TV-related conversations through a partnership with Twitter.

“Whether its social impact, over the top, over the air — because 10% of the country watches an over-the-air signal — or mobile or a tablet, cable or satellite, we measure it all,” Nielsen senior vice president of local media product leadership Farshad Family said.

ROOM FOR TWO?

While the two companies are obviously targeting the same universe of customers, they both believe they can happily coexist, perhaps even cooperate.

“The important question is where is this [measurement] headed,” said Nielsen executive vice president and managing director of local media Matt O’Grady. “Digital viewing and traditional linear viewing of video and TV are colliding, and so the measurement is colliding as well between big data and panels.”

He said Nielsen continues to work with big data and that mobile and tablet measurement is dependent upon effective use of big data.

But O’Grady stressed that big data is not a replacement for panel data, which gives the age and sex of a viewer. “There will always be a gold-standard high quality panel to use in conjunction with a big data source,” he said.

In 2011, Viacom had a highly publicized ratings spat with Nielsen, giving Rentrak the chance to show how its set-top data could be dramatically different from Nielsen’s panel method. “Not necessarily a watershed event, but it was supportive of the need for two [measurement companies],” Livek said.

Nielsen is still by far the world leader in providing TV-measurement data and it too offers clients a treasure trove of demographic, household and other data that sets the tone for the $70 billion U.S. TV ad market.

And though Rentrak is moving the measurement conversation toward more granular data, it’s still a long way from ever surpassing the TV-ratings champ.

With about $5.7 billion in revenue in fiscal 2013, Nielsen also dwarfs Rentrak, with fiscal 2014 sales of $75.6 million, financially. Even with the exponential growth rates expected by Wunderlich Securities media analyst Matt Harrigan over the next five years — he estimates 2021 sales of $475.2 million — Rentrak still would be less than one-tenth the size of Nielsen.

TRACKING TIMESHIFTING

Nielsen is grappling with shifting viewing habits and advertisers who are looking for ratings that reflect the propensity of most TV watchers to time-shift. Already the industry has adopted a C-plus-3 rating benchmark, which tracks viewership for the three days after a program originally airs.

As so-called “appointment TV” is being pushed further aside by DVRs, tablets, computers and smartphones, other networks and broadcasters have lobbied for a C-plus-7 rating -- which Nielsen also provides -- that would track viewership for seven days after a program originally airs.

While Nielsen argues that appointment TV is certainly not dead — according to its research, the vast majority of television viewing is still done live — it is not ignoring the changing landscape. The company has launched its own mobile measurement product which measures viewership on tablets and smartphones and is readying an approach to track viewership outside of the home — on tablets, computers, mobile devices and even in restaurants and bars — using portable people meters, or devices that hook onto a respondents belt or purse and track their TV viewing.

Nielsen began testing the devices — used for about a decade by Arbitron (now Nielsen Audio) to track radio listeners — for gauging out-of-home TV viewership in the Chicago market earlier this year, with encouraging results. It is currently figuring out its plans to move forward with the service in the near future.

“The market is headed to a place where the advertisers want to understand their audiences in a much more detailed, nuanced way,” O’Grady said. Nielsen this year introduced Local Buyer Reach, which includes purchasing information from 40 different categories including automotive, retail shopping and grocery sales. It has received strong interest, he said.

But Nielsen is still hampered by its sample approach, Harrigan said. “For the local markets, it’s just absurdly small.”

THINKING LOCALLY

“In Portland, there are probably 800 [Nielsen] meters, where Rentrak would literally have hundreds of thousands of TVs that we look at. Of those 800 people, if 25 go on vacation or are not watching the news, you will see a big dip in the ratings,” Rentrak corporate president Cathy Hetzel said. “We don’t have a ratings bounce because we have such a massive and stable database.”

Zenith Media chief data officer Rob Jayson said while the agency will continue to use Nielsen data in some markets; the intention is to eventually move to Rentrak data exclusively and is testing using the Rentrak data in several markets. While he said that could pose some risk, “the upside for this is immense. The downside, which is sticking with a broken system that we don’t believe serves our clients’ interest, is also big.”

Zenith Media is part of Zenith Optimedia, which has more than 7,400 employees in 262 offices across 74 countries. Parent Publicis Groupe is the world’s third-largest communications group, and the world’s secondlargest media counsel and buying group.

“The integration of data is definitely where the whole media industry is going, the ability to join the dots together and see what’s working,” Jayson said. “You just can’t do that under a small panel size or a diary system.”

Rentrak had long ago carved out a niche providing data on movie-studio box office and video-on-demand viewership for cable operators. But Livek, an industry veteran who took the helm in 2009, saw an even bigger opportunity — using the census-based data that Rentrak gleaned from set-top boxes and merging it with the demographic, household income and purchasing data to provide brand owners and advertisers with the in-depth information on buying habits they’ve been looking for.

“Most people thought you could never compete with Nielsen,” Livek said. “I actually felt that we could absolutely compete with Nielsen without competing with them at all, and that was in inventing a new category.”

That led to additional business with TV-station groups, as well as other smaller networks and ad agencies that use Rentrak information to track make-goods when shows don’t provide the agreed upon audience for advertisers.

In addition to its existing products in the TV Everywhere and online video arena, Rentrak also is developing an overnight product similar to Nielsen’s that could be released to the local market next year.

The CEO of Rentrak found it strange that while Nielsen was explaining a mistake it made in calculating ratings, it took time out to criticize Rentrak.

“Obviously they had a conference call because they fell and broke their arm,” said Rentrak CEO Bill Livek, referring to his ratings competitor. “My mother taught me a long time ago that when someone falls and breaks a limb, don’t laugh.”

While declining to comment on Nielsen’s measurement error, Livek said: “I did think it was quite odd that they decided while they fell and broke their arm they’re calling their neighbor pejorative things.”

During a conference call that focused on a software problem that led to viewing of broadcast and syndicated shows being incorrectly attributed to ABC, Nielsen global president Steve Hasker, criticized Rentrak, which had been in the news for acquiring some of Kantar Media’s U.S. assets from WPP. In exchange, WPP took a stake in Rentrak and its GroupM media buying unit became a Rentrak client.

Hasker said Nielsen had to respond to inaccuracies in Rentrak’s recent announcements, and also criticized its methodology and capabilities.

Livek maintains that Rentrak’s data is census level in the movie business and for video on demand. As for linear and DVR TV, once households from Cox and DirecTV are incorporated, it will receive data from 60 million television sets.

Read more at B&C here.

Nielsen said a software glitch that attributed some viewership data for broadcast and syndicated shows to the wrong networks has been corrected and that the rating giant is taking measures to assure that the problem never happens again.

In a conference call with reporters, Nielsen said the mistake was negligible – accounting for between 0.1% and 0.25% of all viewing minutes – and was discovered internally as well as by clients.

The mishap dates back to March, but was not caught until after the fall broadcast season had already started. Nielsen said the problem was corrected on Oct. 6 and that it will issue restated ratings to clients beginning with Aug. 18.

Nielsen declined to comment on whether the ratings were attributed to one network – some reports have said that ABC was the sole beneficiary – as it allows its clients to digest the ratings data. Senior vice president planning policy Patricia McDonough said that once ratings are officially released on Monday, the company may have more to say.

Nielsen Global president Steve Hasker added that the discrepancy was tiny, but in the spirit of full transparency the ratings giant felt obligated to release the info.

”Our next priority will be to restate the data for the affected networks for the current TV season,” Hasker said on the call. “...We expect there to be a very limited impact.”

Hasker estimated that about 98.5% of all shows were affected by no more than 0.05 of a ratings point.

The news comes after Nielsen stock fell 4% Thursday after rival ratings measurement company Rentrak announced deals with WPP’s Kantar Media , Group M and with Zenith Media.

Nielsen stock closed at $41.29 each on Oct. 9 (down 4% or $1.72 each) as investors grew skittish that Rentrak’s set-top box derived big data strategy may be gaining a bigger foothold in the TV measurement space. Nielsen shares were up about 2% (87 cents each) to $42.16 in afternoon trading on Oct. 10.

Hasker came out swinging on the conference call, noting that Nielsen doesn’t usually comment on the competition, but felt compelled to do so in this case.

“Our friends at Rentrak has never let the facts get in the way of a good press release,” Hasker said, adding that Rentrak “has never been transparent about their methodology,” so it is difficult to make accurate comparisons.

He argued that Rentrak’s measurement info is not based on census data – he said the Media Rating Council has asked the company to stop using that term. He also noted that Rentrak has no access to demographic data and cannot measure who is watching shows and can only measure viewership from the homes of their partners, or about 40% of the households in the U.S.

Rentrak did not immediately return a call for comment.

Rentrak shares reached their all-time high Thursday after the company announced deals to buy its Kantar Media’s  U.S. TV measurement assets for $98 million in stock and an agreement with top tier media buyer Group M which will use its set-top box data for planning and buying ads.

Rentrak shares traded as high as $75.39 each early Thursday, up 17% ($10.88 each), before slipping slightly to finish the day at $72.07 each, up 12% or $7.56 per share. The stock beat its old high-water mark of $69 per share, soundly.

Rentrak’s gains came as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 300 points on Thursday.

In contrast, shares of TV measurement leader Nielsen dipped about 4% ($1.72 per share) on Oct. 9.

The Kantar Media deal, valued at about $98 million in Rentrak stock (12.4% of outstanding shares), will give the Portland, Ore.-based company a stronger presence in local and national TV measurement. In addition, Kantar and Group M parent WPP said it will purchase about $56 million worth of Rentrak shares, upping its stake to 16.7%. The media giant has agreed not to raise its interest in the company above 20%.

With Group M, Rentrak gains a client that makes about $105 billion in ad billings globally and one that shapes the relationship between TV networks and advertisers – it led the push for C-plus-3 ratings in 2007, now the industry standard.

In a research note to clients, Wunderlich Securities media analyst Matt Harrigan called the WPP deals “pivotal,” adding that with the ability to raise its interest in Rentrak as high as 20%, WPP is the “default likely winner in any eventual full acquisition of Rentrak. It also positions Rentrak as the only massive and passive (census) based provider in the U.S. market.”

Just hours before it was scheduled to ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ Exchange today, measurement company Rentrak rang a few bells of its own, announcing that it has acquired the U.S. Television measurement business from Kantar Media for $98 million in stock and signing an exclusive deal with ad buyer Group M to become the local currency for its TV clients.

Both deals help solidify Rentrak as a solid player in the TV measurement business, a segment that has grown exponentially for the company since CEO Bill Livek joined the Portland, Ore., firm in 2009. The news also comes as Rentrak prepares for its annual Investor Day at NASDAQ headquarters in New York, beginning at 1 pm.

The Kantar transaction will only include the company's U.S. TV measurement business. As part of the deal, Rentrak will also integrate its national and local TV measurement with a number of Kantar’s U.S.-based services that focus on digital media, advertising expenditure and purchase data. The integration will provide advertisers, agencies, TV networks, multichannel video program distributors (MVPDs) and local television stations throughout the U.S. with tools to understand consumers’ purchasing habits and the ability to link TV viewing habits with purchase and other behavior in the United States.

“The combined expertise of Kantar and Rentrak will enable clients to better comprehend and leverage the relationship between United States TV viewing and brands,” said Kantar CEO Eric Salama in a statement. “We are excited about the future products that we can develop with Rentrak for the U.S. television industry.  Clients will benefit from our focus on respondent-level media and purchase data.”

The deal terms involve about 1.53 million Rentrak shares, or 12.4% of Rentrak’s total shares outstanding.  As part of the agreement, Kantar parent WPP will also purchase shares directly from the company for $56 million in cash, giving WPP a final ownership stake of 16.7% of Rentrak’s stock. WPP may also purchase Rentrak shares on the open market so long as its total ownership of Rentrak stock does not exceed 20%.

“This agreement is designed to help all of our U.S. agency and TV advertiser clients with new services in television measurement and consumer insights,” said Rentrak’s Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bill Livek in a statement. “We are thrilled to be working with WPP and look forward to partnering with Kantar to provide the marketplace with the best next generation of services.”
Goldman, Sachs & Co. served as financial advisor to Rentrak.

With Group M, Rentrak adds its second top ad agency in a week -- it announced a deal with Zenith Media earlier -- to utilize its set-top box-based data.

GroupM manages $105 billion in media billings globally and serves as parent company to Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom and Maxus.  With this deal. Rentrak claims it has contracts with all of the largest agency holding companies.

“Rentrak is thrilled to work with GroupM and its agencies, and that they will use our services for the benefit of their clients,” Livek said in a statement. “This partnership will help our customers achieve maximum profitability.”

GroupM and its agencies will have full access to Rentrak’s TV viewing information and will, over time, use the data broadly. The agency will utilize the measurement company's advanced analytics in automotive and other categories on a local and national basis. On Demand and multi-platform data will be used to provide a more complete picture of television viewing patterns. In addition, Rentrak’s data will be used to quantify viewing levels in more than 200 networks that are not currently measured by the legacy sample currency, as well as in local markets.

“The proliferation of channels has so significantly fragmented audiences that legacy sample methodology simply can’t keep up,” said Irwin Gotlieb, global chairman of GroupM in a statement. “Television measurement needs to move toward census-based methodology. Our agencies are doing such refined targeting and segmentation, and that work can only be supported by census data. It is our hope that we can act as catalysts in moving the industry toward greater data reliability and accountability.”

Rentrak has made a few key changes regarding the terms it uses to describe its TV measurement services. 

Rather than continuing to refer to its national and local television measurement services as “census-like,” Rentrak will now describe those services as “Rentrak Local” and “Rentrak National,” respectively. The terminology change comes after consultation with the Media Rating Council, which claimed that "census like" was not an accurate way to describe the TV measurement services Rentrak offers.

The company's theatrical film and VOD measurement services will remain defined as "census-like." 

Rentrak currently measures approximately 13 million return-path TV homes and 29 million TVs across several MVPDs and regions. According to a statement from Rentrak, the company estimates it will provide measurement services for approximately 26 million TV homes and 60 million TVs by 2015.