Nielsen's Position Is Threatened; Facebook Admits To More Measurement Miscalculations

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Nielsen’s House

Nielsen is trying. It had an acquisitive 2016, snapping up Repucom, Informate Mobile and Pointlogic, and Variety has reported “advanced talks” for Gracenote’s content recognition tech. But the pressure won’t relent, as Google, marketing clouds, holding companies and a few dozen digital metrics startups all squeeze through the door Nielsen used to call its own. But after a cheerless investor day, several analysts including Pivotal’s Brian Wieser and BMO’s Dan Salmon lowered their expectations for the company’s stock.

Oh, Facebook

Facebook revealed another set of measurement miscalculations – this time around audience estimates and Live video reactions. The platform will update its audience estimation tool to better gauge an ad’s overall reach. These miscalculations don’t involve metrics used to bill advertisers, The New York Times reports, but Facebook’s transparency around them signals pressure (and perhaps willingness) to open up a bit. “We know how important it is to be open about meaningful updates we make to our metrics,” Facebook said in a blog post. More at TechCrunch.

Welcome To The Family

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella formally welcomed LinkedIn to the family in a blog post … on LinkedIn. Read it. He outlines a road map for integration, including extending LinkedIn sponsored content across Microsoft properties, developing a business news desk across Microsoft’s content ecosystem and combining social selling through Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365. Top of mind is growing LinkedIn and beefing up Microsoft’s capabilities as a B2B network. “Microsoft – inclusive of LinkedIn – can take steps to help people develop new skills online, find new jobs and easily connect and collaborate with colleagues,” he writes.

Header Holdouts

Publishers have not universally converted to header bidding. Anthony Hitchings, director ad operations for the Financial Times, says his company isn’t the ideal fit for header bidding since it relies more on its print biz and branded content revenue. But he isn’t alone. “We do not believe that the use of multiple tags in the page’s header adds any value to the user experience for our global audience,” according to David Goddard, global head of programmatic trading for BBC Advertising. More at Digiday.

But Wait, There’s More!