Nielsen, the incumbent measurement supplier for the U.S. linear TV market, will promote to non-public fairness.
The corporate mentioned Monday it accepted a takeover bid from a bunch of PE firms led by Evergreen Coast Capital Company, an affiliate of activist funding agency Elliott Administration, which has been pushing to take Nielsen personal.
The all-cash deal values Nielsen at $16 billion, or roughly $28 per share, together with debt. The transaction is topic to approval from Nielsen shareholders and regulators however is predicted to shut within the second half of 2022.
The settlement comes after Nielsen rejected a earlier $9 billion takeover bid by the group that it claimed undervalued the corporate.
Information of the sale comes simply forward of upfront season, as Nielsen faces ongoing scrutiny from the promoting and media trade in regards to the viability of its merchandise.
Advertisers and media house owners have been annoyed by Nielsen’s lack of ability to trace cross-screen viewership for years. The long-simmering dissatisfaction boiled over in August, when the Media Rankings Council stripped Nielsen of its nationwide and native TV measurement accreditations after the corporate did not precisely depend family viewership in the course of the pandemic. Nielsen had beforehand misplaced accreditation for its digital advert rankings forex as properly.
Nielsen promised to disclose a completely purposeful, cross-platform forex below the brand new banner NielsenOne in 2024. However that isn’t quick sufficient for a lot of massive advertisers and media house owners, that are already testing new currencies and measurement suppliers throughout this yr’s upfronts.
NBCUniversal, for example, introduced final week it will use iSpotTV as a purposeful forex in the course of the 2022 upfront after working with the supplier to measure viewership throughout Tremendous Bowl LVI and the Beijing Winter Olympics. Advert consumers are transferring on as properly, testing the viability of suppliers comparable to VideoAmp to supply a fuller image of their purchasers’ advert supply.
However not all advert consumers and sellers are writing off Nielsen, with most persevering with to make use of the supplier in some type for the foreseeable future. As for Evergreen Coast Capital, the agency nonetheless sees potential for Nielsen to dominate within the measurement area with the event of NielsenOne.
“After months of deep market evaluation, trade diligence and administration critiques, we’re firmly satisfied Nielsen will proceed to be the gold commonplace for viewers measurement because it executes on the NielsenOne roadmap,” mentioned Jesse Cohn, managing accomplice at Evergreen, and Marc Steinberg, senior portfolio supervisor at Elliott, in an announcement.
“Having first invested in Nielsen practically 4 years in the past, now we have a singular appreciation for the corporate’s ongoing relevance to the worldwide, digital-first media ecosystem. As we speak’s end result represents a big win for Nielsen’s shareholders and for the enterprise itself, as our multibillion-dollar funding will assist Nielsen reinforce its transformation at this essential inflection level.”