Nielsen Launches Audio DMP In Partnership With Westwood One

Measurement leader Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE:NLSN) sealed a partnership with Cumulus Media (NASDAQ:CMLS) owned Westwood One for audio data management. The company yesterday announced the launch of its fist ever audio data management platform with Westwood One as a chartered client.

As part of the deal, Westwood One will use Nielsen Marketing Cloud and its advanced data management platform (Nielsen DMP) to let advertisers make intelligent buying decisions across its over-the-air radio and streaming audio channels. Westwood One claims that it reaches out to roughly 250 million listeners weekly across all U.S. media markets.

Notably, Nielsen renewed its audio agreement with CBS Corporation’s (NYSE:CBS) CBS Radio last month. As part of the renewal program, CBS Radio uses DMP to connect with listeners via digital channels.

Deal Details

Using Nielsen Marketing Cloud, Westwood One provides detailed reports to its advertisers, guiding them through its network station lineups, key programming and radio formats. This in turn helps advertisers tap prospective customers based on demographics, personalities, digital behavior, TV viewing habits, credit card spending and specific product purchases.

The DMP enables Nielsen Marketing Cloud to unite Westwood One's radio formats with offline purchase data. This is done by connecting Westwood One audience data collected through Nielsen's Portable People Meter (PPM) and Westwood's proprietary streaming audio data with a wide range of Nielsen data assets in real time.

Nielsen data assets include Nielsen Catalina Solutions' CPG purchase data that cover 121,000 brands and 184 million individuals, and Nielsen Buyer Insights purchase data that cover $1.2 billion in consumer spending across 125 million U.S. credit cardholders.

How is Nielsen Poised to Benefit?

We believe that the move will help Nielsen expand its client base and boost its Watch segment revenues. This segment provides viewership and listening data and analytics across radio, television, online and mobile screens, primarily to media and advertising industries. The performance of the segment was particularly strong in the last quarter.

In the last quarter, Watch business revenues were $769 million (50.4% of total first quarter revenue), up 10.8% year over year and 11.1% on a constant currency basis. The increase came on the back of continued strength in Audience Measurement and Marketing Effectiveness, which improved 13.3% and 14%, respectively, on a constant currency basis.

Nielsen N.V. Revenue (TTM)

Nielsen N.V. Revenue (TTM) | Nielsen N.V. Quote

Excluding the acquisition of Gracenote, Watch revenues increased 5.9% and 6.2% on a constant currency basis.

Going forward, strengthening Watch segment revenues could boost its share price as well that depreciated 28.2% in the last one year. This is in contrast to the Zacks Business - Information Services industry’s gain of 5.2%.

What’s on Westwood One’s Platter?

The partnership should help Westwood One attract national buyers in more verticals, especially consumer packaged goods (CPG) as it enables them to measure closed-loop attribution.

It could enable the company to make its channel more addressable, thereby giving it an edge over digital platforms such as Spotify and Pandora (NYSE:P) .

Wrapping Up

The deal is a prime example of how Nielsen is utilizing its strong position in viewership data and analytics across media and advertising industries and focusing on innovation to gain new clients and retain the existing ones.

Currently, Nielsen is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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