A 92-Year-Old Giant Makes 21st Century Moves

Despite that I often watch Hulu and cringe at the black-screen glitch that plagues many of the ad placements — thinking to myself, “Yikes, if those were my media dollars, I’d be miffed” — the explosion of digital TV consumption and ad placement is undeniable. As Variety recently reported, “Digital-video usage overall rose 60% year over year” between 2013 and 2014. This continued growth in digital content and ad consumption across multiple devices provides advertisers and media companies with new opportunities to collect and analyze user data, and giants in the industry have taken notice.

The Nielsen Company — the household name in media analytics for traditional television viewing — was founded in 1923, but don’t let that give you the wrong idea: Grandpa has some new moves. The company has made news recently with partnerships and acquisitions that signal significant changes in the industry. Soon, advertisers will be able to connect the dots like never before.

One exciting move was the announcement of a Nielsen partnership with Adobe, which you can read more about on the Wall Street Journal’s blog here

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal also reported that “Nielsen said it has acquired eXelate, a data and technology company that helps digital advertisers better target online advertising.” Read more about that deal here

This isn’t a tech start-up scratching a new path in the wilderness of online media, but rather an age-old behemoth making deals that affect the entire industry. These are exciting times as we see the divide between “traditional” advertising and digital “programmatic” advertising fuse into a closed-circuit system providing richer levels of feedback to marketing professionals.