Paramount Global’s partnership with Nielsen, on hold since Oct. 1, challenges Nielsen’s ratings measurement dominance and highlights how the upended TV ecosystem is impacting the advertising environment.
If Paramount makes good on its threat to break with Nielsen over price hikes that are “inconsistent with the realities of a changing industry,” as a company spokesperson told TheWrap, it would mark a sea change for the TV industry. Networks have long complained that Nielsen isn’t measuring audiences as well as it should during the transition from linear to streaming, although a Nielsen spokesperson stressed the company has the most accurate streaming data in the industry.
But the chances of Paramount permanently severing its ties with Nielsen are “slim to none,” given the large number of media buyers out there still intertwined with the firm’s tools and metrics, Samba TV CEO Ashwin Navin told TheWrap.
“Nielsen would have a hard time replacing that revenue from such a massive customer,” Navin added. “They’re both motivated to close the gap.”
“Buyers and sellers are more motivated than ever to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their ad spend,” MediaRadar CEO Matt Krepsik told TheWrap. “If Paramount stands by its decision to move away from Nielsen as a currency partner, it sends a significant message across the industry about where legacy models stand and opens the door for the future of streaming monetization in a more programmatic and performance-based advertising ecosystem.”
CBS and Nielsen got into a similar pricing dispute in 2019, which lasted 11 days. But Nielsen is facing more competition than ever before in the TV measurement space from companies like Comscore, iSpot.tv and VideoAmp, the latter of which Paramount is using now. And Paramount is tightening its belt ahead of a merger with Skydance Media, with plans to lay off 15% of its U.S. workforce to find $500 million in cost savings. The advertising division is among the already impacted areas.
Paramount said it’s already prepared to permanently switch to VideoAmp as its ratings measurement partner. Nielsen’s costs as a percentage of Paramount’s ad revenue have “quintupled” over significant parts of its business, and proposed fees exceed the total ad revenue of the network being measured in some instances, advertising president John Halley previously said in a memo to agencies.
“We have spent the last few years preparing for a multi-currency future and creating the operational infrastructure to move beyond Nielsen,” a Paramount spokesperson said. “We are confident in the quality of our alternative currency offering for clients as we continue efforts to reach a new Nielsen agreement with reasonable economic terms.”
The disagreement speaks to a larger trend in the advertising industry as connected TV, programmatic media and currency metrics — the financial unit of value for buying and selling TV ads based on measurement data — continue to evolve.
During the second quarter of 2024, Paramount reported a 16% increase in direct-to-consumer advertising revenue to $513 million, while its TV/media ad revenue fell 11% to 1.7 billion. Domestic advertising for the TV/media segment was negatively impacted by sports making up a smaller share of inventory for the quarter. Overall, Paramount’s advertising declined 6% in the quarter.
“Disengaging is not our first choice, and we hope to reach an agreement with fair and mutually acceptable terms,” Halley concluded.
Nielsen’s traditional dominance under scrutiny
Nielsen has dominated media measurement for the better part of a century. Advertisers largely depend on its data, which includes the Streaming Top 10 and The Gauge, in order to help determine their spending on commercials as audiences shift from linear TV to streaming.
“Nielsen charges over a hundred companies for the same dataset,” media and marketing consultant Marshall Cohen noted in a LinkedIn post. “If they lower their contractual prices for one — they pretty much must lower their prices for all. This is very difficult with private equity owners, who don’t understand the business, wanting better returns.”
But TV networks have long complained that Nielsen isn’t measuring audiences as well as it should during that transition. In 2021, the Media Ratings Council found that the firm undercounted viewers during the COVID-19 pandemic, which temporarily resulted in a suspension of their accreditation.
“There has been a long-running contention in the streaming space that Nielsen undercounts viewers and that their methodology isn’t built for modern audiences using streaming and mobile devices,” Matt Voda, CEO of marketing analytics firm OptiMine, told TheWrap. “The choice of a different measurement approach may actually help Paramount if they believe that it is more accurate, and shows that their audiences are actually larger than what Nielsen has reported historically.”

In order to measure streaming audiences, Nielsen uses a combination of panel data — which tracks a specific group or market’s viewing habits — and proprietary metering technology in order to determine what content is being streamed, for how long and on what devices.
Despite Paramount’s confidence in being able to move on from Nielsen, permanently walking away is easier said than done. Advertisers have been somewhat slow to adopt Nielsen alternatives, with the last two upfront seasons primarily using the firm’s data, according to eMarketer.

Media Dynamics president Edward Papazian points out that most buyers would be unwilling to make a change from Nielsen’s ratings measurement, which is viewed as the industry standard. VideoAmp, which is not accredited by the MRC, is certified by the Joint Industry Committee, which represents advertisers, agencies and media owners.
He added that there’s also an issue of comparability when switching measurement providers that could impact a buyer’s ability to negotiate makegoods — a credit or adjustment when an ad doesn’t meet the terms of its agreement.
“How does the buyer negotiate makegoods next season if the source changes from what was used in making the upfront buys?,” Papazian said. “In fact, how does the buyer know what was delivered if the sources aren’t the same?”
Enter VideoAmp
Over the past four months, Paramount said that it has been providing agencies with both Nielsen and VideoAmp datasets for its active campaigns. Halley noted that any budget can be expressed in VideoAmp terms and that Paramount has already done so for all upfront plans.
In its latest round of upfront negotiations, Paramount co-CEO Chris McCarthy said linear volume trends were “in line” with last year and its cost per thousand impressions, or CPMs, were up, driven by sports and broadcast. On the digital side, Paramount secured commitments in excess of $1 billion across its streaming portfolio.
VideoAmp, a 10-year-old company that first struck a partnership with Paramount in 2021, has worked closely with the legacy media conglomerate to increase its advertisers’ audience reach, drive revenue and optimize media investments. The measurement firm covers 98% of the TV publisher ecosystem, with 11 agency groups and more than 1,000 advertisers.
“Paramount was one of the first media companies to transact on VideoAmp, and has been an incredibly valued partner over the past three years,” VideoAmp chief commercial and growth officer Pete Bradbury told TheWrap.
The company says it has seen adoption for its measurement and currency solutions grow 641% year over year, with $1 billion in guaranteed media dollars as of Sept. 17. (VideoAmp says it’s on track to reach $1.5 billion by year end.) Its dataset currently covers 40 million homes and 65 million devices, offering second-by-second viewership measurement and out of home viewing, and it is making ongoing improvements to its data-driven linear and advanced audience measurement capabilities and integrating with its clients directly to provide cross platform content ratings.
“This is a critical moment,” former VideoAmp chief measurability officer Josh Chasin wrote in a LinkedIn post. “If Paramount is able to do business using VideoAmp, without [financial] downside, then the other programmers will naturally start considering making the same move.”
VideoAmp may have its own struggles, though. The company, which was last valued at $1.4 billion during a late-stage Series F equity raise in 2021, is reportedly eyeing a sale or a joint venture with a rival after multiple rounds of layoffs and losing its CEO, Axios reported, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. Executive chairman Peter Liguori pushed back against the report, telling TheWrap it is “not discussing or considering a merger, joint venture or sale at this time.”
In addition to Paramount, Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group (AMG) struck a 10-year pact with VideoAmp last year. But on Oct. 4, AMG inked a multi-year audience measurement agreement with Nielsen, which will cover the company’s networks and syndicated businesses across cable and digital and provide access to the firm’s big data measurement tools.
Will Paramount permanently walk away?
A Nielsen spokesperson told TheWrap that it hopes to reach a new deal with Paramount and emphasized that all of its other customers and the industry at large would continue to have full access to its data. The firm has a deal in place with every other legacy media company.
The spokesperson contended that Nielsen has the “largest, most representative” sample of people and is “far ahead” of anyone else in measuring streaming and viewing across devices, noting its competitors don’t have a streaming meter. They also said the company has more direct integrations with major media platforms than anyone else and is the only measurement firm to offer out-of-home viewing, including on mobile devices.
Over the past six months, Nielsen has launched new capabilities to expand its measurement around audience and out-of-home viewing. Its data currently covers 45 million households and 75 million devices in the U.S. alone.
The choice of a different measurement approach may actually help Paramount if they believe that it is more accurate, and shows that their audiences are actually larger than what Nielsen has reported historically.”
— Matt Voda, CEO of marketing analytics firm OptiMine
While he wouldn’t rule out Paramount moving on from Nielsen, Brad Adgate, a former Horizon Media SVP of research, told TheWrap he’s optimistic the two parties will find a resolution.
“I don’t think that this is going to be a very prolonged impasse. Nielsen negotiates contracts all the time with networks, stations or radio groups and very rarely does it reach this point,” Adgate said. “There’s more competition than there was five years ago and that will certainly play a role. But Nielsen is fully aware of that and is going to come to some resolution, because they’re very protective of their core businesses.”
In the meantime, Adgate expects that advertisers who have already done deals with Paramount will not hesitate to let the company know if they’ve underdelivered and ask for makegoods.
Though one media investment executive believes the industry at large isn’t ready to make a “wholesale change” away from Nielsen, they told TheWrap that the impasse would likely accelerate the movement toward alternative forms of currency.
“We may see these legacy deals become shorter and less committal in the interest of media owners keeping options open in coming years,” the person said, while emphasizing that impressions or ratings are just one of many elements that make up an agency’s ecosystem.
As Nielsen continues to roll out its own big data service, Papazian expects it to continue to dominate as TV’s national rating currency and that the tool’s influence will extend into streaming.
“This does not preclude the selective use of add-on ‘currencies’ by individual sellers with some buyers, but almost always these deals will start with Nielsen ratings as the basic — or ‘standard’ — currency,” he added.