The battle between Paramount Global and measurement giant Nielsen is rapidly becoming a war of words.
Nielsen CEO Kartik Rao said in a letter to customers earlier this week that Paramount was pushing for “nearly 50% reductions.” Negotiations between the two sides have remained fruitless, resulting in the suspension of Nielsen ratings for Paramount properties, including CBS, Comedy Central, and Paramount Network, for several weeks.
Paramount, which is in the process of cutting $500 million from its business, has suggested it shouldn’t pay Nielsen a higher fee if the fee exceeds the advertising revenue it receives from TV ratings. Paramount, like many of its rivals, spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on Nielsen measurements.
“This is really not an affordability issue. It’s about getting value for what you pay for,” Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks told investors last week. said in a conference call. “And I think it’s important to think about all of this in the context of the media industry. So, as everyone knows, linear viewers, especially basic cable linear viewers, are declining, and streaming Of course, this will affect how we look at appropriate spending here, meaning, for example, that the Nielsen fee for a particular network will be higher than the ad revenue that network actually generates. That is not desirable.”
In fact, Paramount executives believe Nielsen’s current offer includes what they see as significant long-term price increases under any deal framework, according to people familiar with the matter. . The person added that the increase is likely to be significant considering what Paramount is paying.
Nielsen’s CEO feels Paramount wants to treat some customers more favorably than others. “The value of a service cannot be reset to a fraction of its value due to circumstances or the demands of a single customer,” Rao said in a letter sent and reviewed on Monday. Variety. “We are an industry solution, and price consistency is critical to the role we play in the industry.”
Paramount and Nielsen both declined to make executives available for comment.
Paramount has been unable to use Nielsen metrics since September 30th. Meanwhile, Paramount has relied on rival provider Video Amplifier for audience measurement services, which has struck deals with several networks and buysiders in recent years. It is offered by several major purchasing agencies as a potential alternative to Nielsen aggregations.
Nevertheless, the dispute left Paramount unable to offer the same audience protection as its competitors. During this period, Paramount has not released any Nielsen ratings related to its most-watched programming, including the NFL games it airs every Sunday on CBS. Performance on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” Or the debate hosted by CBS News in October between then-candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Walz.
Earlier this week, Paramount released viewer numbers from Video Amp for the new season debut of its hit series “Yellowstone.” According to these metrics, the new episodes drew an average of 16.4 million viewers across all Paramount Networks that simulcast the premiere and Sunday night encore broadcast. But about 13.62 million viewers watched the show on Paramount Network, CBS and a handful of other Paramount-owned cable networks, according to Nielsen tallies. Advertisers and media buyers who have their own deals with Nielsen will still have access to ratings for Paramount’s programming and may examine differences in the two measurement companies’ results.
Officials say Paramount is confident in VideoAmp’s technology. The company has agreements with several other networks and purchasing agencies, and is working with the Media Ratings Council, an industry group that governs the use of different measurement methods, to gain industry support. The official noted that Nielsen also uses several measurement services, which also have not yet received MRC approval.
At issue is a long-standing complaint from television networks that Nielsen doesn’t adequately measure the different audiences of their programs. As consumers embrace smartphones, mobile tablets, and broadband-connected televisions, viewers are able to stream their favorite TV shows on demand, making counting exponentially more difficult. I am. Television networks have long set advertising rates based on Nielsen’s measure of linear TV viewership, but as consumers embrace Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and other streaming and on-demand options, viewership rates have declined. decreased.
However, in recent months, Nielsen has made some gains in the market. The company recently won certification for its ability to use media companies’ own first-party data to aggregate audiences. Already, Amazon Prime Video is working to add that to its streaming ratings for the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football.”
Nielsen’s CEO said the company is not trying to impose huge price increases on its customers, but rather “to focus on the quality of our service, which is empirically better than at any point in our history.” “We aim to maintain fair value for quality.” Our proposal to Paramount is very reasonable and commensurate with the value our services provide. ”
“We look forward to reaching an agreement with Paramount Global,” the executive said. But the longer the impasse between the companies persists, the harder it may be to reach an agreement.
