VNU
Encyclopedia
Nielsen is a global marketing
and advertising research
company headquartered in Lower Manhattan
, New York City
. Nielsen is active in over 100 countries, and employs some 32,000 people worldwide. Total revenues amounted to $5.1 billion in 2010.
), online intelligence (Nielsen Online) and mobile measurement (Nielsen Mobile). On January 25, 2011 the company issued an IPO raising $1.6 billion in the biggest private equity-backed U.S. IPO since 2006.
David L. Calhoun
is Nielsen's Chief Executive Officer. Calhoun came to Nielsen in 2006 from General Electric
. Susan D. Whiting is the Executive Vice President of Nielsen and Chairman of Nielsen Media Research. Whiting has been with Nielsen since 1978 and was named one of the 100 Most Influential Women in New York City business by Crain's New York Business in 2007.
Nielsen's major businesses include:
founded the AC Nielsen Company in 1923 with the idea of selling engineering performance surveys. It was the first company to offer market research
. The company expanded its business in 1932 by creating a retail index that tracked the flow of food and drug purchases. This was the first retail measurement of its kind and for the first time allowed a company to determine its “share” of the market. Arthur C. Nielsen is credited with coining this business term.
stations a radio had been tuned to during the day. After tinkering with the device for a few years, the company created a national radio rating service in 1942. The company collected information on which stations were tuned to in 1,000 homes. Then, this survey data was sold to manufacturers who were interested in the popularity of programs and demographic information about listeners for advertising purposes. This was the birth of audience measurement that would become the most well-known part of Nielsen’s business when applied to television. Today, these are commonly referred to as “Nielsen ratings
.”
The company began measuring television audiences in 1950, at a time when the medium was just getting off the ground. Just as with radio, a sampling of homes across the U.S. was used to develop ratings. This information was collected on a device that was attached to a television that recorded what was being watched. In 1953, the company began sending out diaries to a smaller sample of homes (“Nielsen families”) within the survey to have them record what they had watched. This data was put together with information from the devices. This combination of data allowed the company to statistically estimate the number of Americans watching TV and the demographic breakdown of viewers. This became an important tool for advertisers and networks.
In the 1980s, the company launched a new measurement device known as the “people meter
.” The device resembles a remote control with buttons for each individual family member and extras for guests. Viewers push a button to signify when they are in the room and push it again when they leave, even if the TV is still on. This form of measurement was intended to provide a more accurate picture of who was watching and when.
On November 18, 2008 Nielsen announced that will return to the US radio ratings business after discontinuing the service in 1968. The new radio rating service debuted in 50 US mid-size radio markets in the spring of 2009 and the results were available in the summer. Nielsen will use its address-based sampling (ABS) to recruit sample households. The Nielsen-pioneered method uses randomly selected addresses rather than telephone numbers in its domestic television measurement in order to reach the 34% of U.S. households that are not covered by current sampling methods, including cell-phone only and many unlisted land line phone households, according to the company.
In July 2008, Nielsen released the first in a series of quarterly reports, detailing video and TV usage across the ‘three screens’ – Television, Internet and Mobile devices. The A2/M2 Three Screen Report also includes trends in timeshifted viewing behavior and its relationship to online video viewing, a demographic breakdown of mobile video viewers and DVR penetration.
in 1984. D&B, as it is known today, broke Nielsen into two separate companies in 1996. These were Nielsen Media Research, which was responsible for TV ratings, and AC Nielsen, which was responsible for consumer shopping trends and box-office data. The Dutch publishing company VNU
(Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen) acquired Nielsen Media Research in 1999. It later recombined the two halves of the business when it acquired AC Nielsen in 2001. In between, it sold its newspaper properties to Wegener
and its consumer magazines to Sanoma.
In 2004, Nielsen began a joint venture called AGB Nielsen Media Research with WPP Group
's AGB Group, a European competitor which provides similar services.
VNU
combined the Nielsen properties with other research and data collection units including BASES, Claritas, HCI and Spectra. The company's publishing arm also owned several publications including The Hollywood Reporter
and Billboard
magazine. VNU began acquiring companies that added to its measurement capabilities. In 2006, it acquired a majority stake in Buzzmetrics, a company which measures consumer-generated media online. Under the new ownership, Nielsen bought the remaining shares of the company in 2007. In the same year, Nielsen acquired Telephia, which measures mobile media, and Bilesim Medya, a Turkish advertising intelligence firm.
In 2006, VNU was acquired by a group of six private equity firms: the American Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
, Thomas H. Lee Partners
, Blackstone Group
, Carlyle Group
and Hellman & Friedman
, and Dutch equity firm AlpInvest Partners
for £5bn. In the same year, the group hired David L. Calhoun, formerly of General Electric
, as CEO. He renamed VNU as The Nielsen Company in 2007.
VNU sold its business publications division in 2006 for €320m (£210m) to venture capital group 3i
, which then sold the UK division (VNU Business Publications Ltd) to Incisive Media
.
In 2008, the company acquired IAG Research which measures viewer engagement with TV commercials. The same year Nielsen made a strategic investment in NeuroFocus
, a California firm applying neuroscience brainwave techniques for consumer research. In 2009 and 2010, Nielsen sold its business magazines; its well-known entertainment properties went to the new company e5 Global Media
. On June 3, 2010 Nielsen Holdings filed with the SEC to raise up to $1.75 billion in an initial public offering.
In June 2010 Nielsen paired with Mckinsey to create the social media consulting company NM Incite. Through "NM Incite," Nielsen combines its Buzzmetrics listening platform technology with McKinsey's management consultants, to offer a broad range of social consulting influenced by social media data and analytics. NM Incite has operations in 13 global markets, including: US, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India, Brazil, Canada and Korea.
In Aug 2011 Nielsen acquired Marketing Analytics, Inc., one of the pioneers of marketing mix modeling
and a recognized leader in analytics and advanced planning software. Headquartered in Evanston, Ill. and founded in 1991, Marketing Analytics, Inc. helps companies measure the impact of their marketing plans on sales by combining deep modeling expertise with robust software applications. Link, a long-time innovator in marketing modeling, will continue to lead the group and work to integrate these capabilities into Nielsen offerings. The acquisition enables Nielsen to provide marketers of fast moving consumer goods with the most complete and timely view of the impact of media and marketing - a distinct advantage when developing marketing plans across multiple channels, such as online and offline advertising, in-store promotions and consumer promotions.
The 8 pillars of this code are:
Marketing research
Marketing research is "the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information — information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve...
and advertising research
Advertising research
Advertising research is a specialized form of marketing research conducted to improve the efficiency of advertising. According to MarketConscious.com, “It may focus on a specific ad or campaign, or may be directed at a more general understanding of how advertising works or how consumers use the...
company headquartered in Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Nielsen is active in over 100 countries, and employs some 32,000 people worldwide. Total revenues amounted to $5.1 billion in 2010.
Company information
Nielsen is a publicly held global information and media company, and is one of the world's leading suppliers of marketing information (Nielsen Consumer, formerly ACNielsen), media information and TV ratings (Nielsen Media ResearchNielsen Media Research
Nielsen Media Research is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre films and newspapers...
), online intelligence (Nielsen Online) and mobile measurement (Nielsen Mobile). On January 25, 2011 the company issued an IPO raising $1.6 billion in the biggest private equity-backed U.S. IPO since 2006.
David L. Calhoun
Dave Calhoun
David L. Calhoun is the Chief Executive Officer of The Nielsen Company He was appointed to this role in August 2006 and is based in Connecticut....
is Nielsen's Chief Executive Officer. Calhoun came to Nielsen in 2006 from General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
. Susan D. Whiting is the Executive Vice President of Nielsen and Chairman of Nielsen Media Research. Whiting has been with Nielsen since 1978 and was named one of the 100 Most Influential Women in New York City business by Crain's New York Business in 2007.
Nielsen's major businesses include:
- Nielsen Consumer: provides measurement and analysis of marketplace dynamics and consumer attitudes and behavior
- Nielsen Consumer Panel Services (Homescan & Spectra)
- Homescan: multi-outlet panel that captures consumer purchase behavior, demographic profiles, attitudes & usage information and evaluations of the impact of media on actual behavior
- Spectra: suite of applications that provide segmentation and targeting analysis
- BASES: combines primary consumer research with forecasting techniques to estimate the sales potential of new product initiatives prior to market entry.
- Nielsen ClaritasClaritas PrizmNielsen PRIZM is a set of geo-demographic segments for the United States, developed by Claritas Inc., which was then acquired by The Nielsen Company. It was a widely used customer segmentation system for marketing in the United States in the 1990s and continues to be used today.The segments were...
: provides companies with marketing research demographic data, marketing software and market segmentation services - IMS: media planning and analysis software for industry and proprietary research
- Nielsen Business Media: includes trade publications, trade shows, digital products and services, serving markets across the entertainment, media and marketing, retail, travel and performance, and design industries
- Nielsen Entertainment: provides market information, creative testing, marketing solutions and analytical tools through business units focused on film, music, home entertainment, books, and interactive entertainment
- Nielsen BookScanNielsen BookScanNielsen BookScan is a data provider for the book publishing industry, owned by the Nielsen Company. BookScan compiles point of sale data for book sales.-History:...
- Nielsen Broadcast Data SystemsNielsen Broadcast Data SystemsNielsen Broadcast Data Systems, better known as BDS, is a service that tracks monitored radio, television and internet airplay of songs based on the number of spins and detections...
- Nielsen EDI
- Nielsen Music Control
- Nielsen SoundScanNielsen SoundScanNielsen SoundScan is an information and sales tracking system created by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett. Soundscan is the official method of tracking sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada...
- Nielsen VideoScanNielsen VideoScanNielsen VideoScan is the partnership formed between the VideoScan and ACNielsen companies, each of which is owned by The Nielsen Company. Nielsen VideoScan provides detailed point-of-sale data regarding sales of VHS videotape cassettes, DVDs, HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs...
- Nielsen BookScan
- Nielsen IAG: collects engagement metrics - advertisements, product placement, and program sponsorship occurring across all broadcast and major cable networks during primetime
- Nielsen Media ResearchNielsen Media ResearchNielsen Media Research is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre films and newspapers...
: measures the size of audiences for television, radio and print, as well as advertising spending and creative content information and services - Nielsen Mobile: provides syndicated consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets
- Nielsen Online: measurement and analysis of online audiences, advertising, video, blogs, consumer-generated media, word of mouth, commerce and consumer behavior
- PERQ/HCI: reports on advertising expenditures and content in healthcare journals in the U.S.
- Scarborough Research: measures the shopping patterns, lifestyles and media habits of U.S. consumers
- SRDS: provider of media rates and data
Arthur C. Nielsen and the company’s founding
Arthur C. NielsenArthur Nielsen
Arthur Charles Nielsen, Sr. was an American market analyst who founded the ACNielsen company.-Background:Arthur Charles Nielsen was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was of Danish descent. Nielsen was educated at University of Wisconsin , where he received a B.S., summa cum laude in 1918...
founded the AC Nielsen Company in 1923 with the idea of selling engineering performance surveys. It was the first company to offer market research
Market research
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...
. The company expanded its business in 1932 by creating a retail index that tracked the flow of food and drug purchases. This was the first retail measurement of its kind and for the first time allowed a company to determine its “share” of the market. Arthur C. Nielsen is credited with coining this business term.
Radio and television
In 1936, Arthur C. Nielsen acquired the Audimeter, which measured which radioRadio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
stations a radio had been tuned to during the day. After tinkering with the device for a few years, the company created a national radio rating service in 1942. The company collected information on which stations were tuned to in 1,000 homes. Then, this survey data was sold to manufacturers who were interested in the popularity of programs and demographic information about listeners for advertising purposes. This was the birth of audience measurement that would become the most well-known part of Nielsen’s business when applied to television. Today, these are commonly referred to as “Nielsen ratings
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
.”
The company began measuring television audiences in 1950, at a time when the medium was just getting off the ground. Just as with radio, a sampling of homes across the U.S. was used to develop ratings. This information was collected on a device that was attached to a television that recorded what was being watched. In 1953, the company began sending out diaries to a smaller sample of homes (“Nielsen families”) within the survey to have them record what they had watched. This data was put together with information from the devices. This combination of data allowed the company to statistically estimate the number of Americans watching TV and the demographic breakdown of viewers. This became an important tool for advertisers and networks.
In the 1980s, the company launched a new measurement device known as the “people meter
People meter
A people meter is a audience measurement tool used to measure the viewing habits of TV and cable audiences.The People Meter is a 'box', about the size of a paperback book. The box is hooked up to each television set and is accompanied by a remote control unit. Each family member in a sample...
.” The device resembles a remote control with buttons for each individual family member and extras for guests. Viewers push a button to signify when they are in the room and push it again when they leave, even if the TV is still on. This form of measurement was intended to provide a more accurate picture of who was watching and when.
On November 18, 2008 Nielsen announced that will return to the US radio ratings business after discontinuing the service in 1968. The new radio rating service debuted in 50 US mid-size radio markets in the spring of 2009 and the results were available in the summer. Nielsen will use its address-based sampling (ABS) to recruit sample households. The Nielsen-pioneered method uses randomly selected addresses rather than telephone numbers in its domestic television measurement in order to reach the 34% of U.S. households that are not covered by current sampling methods, including cell-phone only and many unlisted land line phone households, according to the company.
In July 2008, Nielsen released the first in a series of quarterly reports, detailing video and TV usage across the ‘three screens’ – Television, Internet and Mobile devices. The A2/M2 Three Screen Report also includes trends in timeshifted viewing behavior and its relationship to online video viewing, a demographic breakdown of mobile video viewers and DVR penetration.
Mergers and acquisitions
The company was acquired by the Dun & Bradstreet CompanyDun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet is a Fortune 500 public company headquartered in Short Hills, New Jersey, USA that provides information on businesses and corporations for use in credit decisions, B2B marketing and supply chain management...
in 1984. D&B, as it is known today, broke Nielsen into two separate companies in 1996. These were Nielsen Media Research, which was responsible for TV ratings, and AC Nielsen, which was responsible for consumer shopping trends and box-office data. The Dutch publishing company VNU
VNU
Nielsen is a global marketing and advertising research company headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Nielsen is active in over 100 countries, and employs some 32,000 people worldwide...
(Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen) acquired Nielsen Media Research in 1999. It later recombined the two halves of the business when it acquired AC Nielsen in 2001. In between, it sold its newspaper properties to Wegener
Wegener (company)
Koninklijke Wegener NV is a Dutch publisher of newspapers. It is the largest publisher of regional newspapers, free newspapers and special interest magazines in the Netherlands and also deals with internet products and graphical products-History:...
and its consumer magazines to Sanoma.
In 2004, Nielsen began a joint venture called AGB Nielsen Media Research with WPP Group
WPP Group
WPP plc is a global media communications services company with its main management office in London, United Kingdom and its executive office in Dublin, Ireland. It is the world's largest advertising group by revenues, and employs over 150,000 people in 2,400 offices in 107 countries...
's AGB Group, a European competitor which provides similar services.
VNU
VNU
Nielsen is a global marketing and advertising research company headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Nielsen is active in over 100 countries, and employs some 32,000 people worldwide...
combined the Nielsen properties with other research and data collection units including BASES, Claritas, HCI and Spectra. The company's publishing arm also owned several publications including The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
and Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
magazine. VNU began acquiring companies that added to its measurement capabilities. In 2006, it acquired a majority stake in Buzzmetrics, a company which measures consumer-generated media online. Under the new ownership, Nielsen bought the remaining shares of the company in 2007. In the same year, Nielsen acquired Telephia, which measures mobile media, and Bilesim Medya, a Turkish advertising intelligence firm.
In 2006, VNU was acquired by a group of six private equity firms: the American Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
KKR & Co. L.P. is an American-based global private equity firm, specializing in leveraged buyouts, based in New York. The firm sponsors and manages private equity investment funds. Since its inception, the firm has completed over $400 billion of private equity transactions and was a pioneer in...
, Thomas H. Lee Partners
Thomas H. Lee Partners
Thomas H. Lee Partners is a private equity firm based in Boston, Massachusetts specializing in leveraged buyouts, growth capital, special situations, industry consolidations, and recapitalizations....
, Blackstone Group
Blackstone Group
The Blackstone Group L.P. is an American-based alternative asset management and financial services company that specializes in private equity, real estate, and credit and marketable alternative investment strategies, as well as financial advisory services, such as mergers and acquisitions ,...
, Carlyle Group
Carlyle Group
The Carlyle Group is an American-based global asset management firm, specializing in private equity, based in Washington, D.C. The Carlyle Group operates in four business areas: corporate private equity, real assets, market strategies and fund-of-funds, through its AlpInvest subsidiary...
and Hellman & Friedman
Hellman & Friedman
Hellman & Friedman is a private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts and minority growth capital investments....
, and Dutch equity firm AlpInvest Partners
AlpInvest Partners
AlpInvest Partners is a private equity investment manager and at the end of 2009 globally managed over €42 billion ....
for £5bn. In the same year, the group hired David L. Calhoun, formerly of General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, as CEO. He renamed VNU as The Nielsen Company in 2007.
VNU sold its business publications division in 2006 for €320m (£210m) to venture capital group 3i
3i
3i Group plc is a multinational private equity and venture capital company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It has offices in 13 countries across Asia, Europe and the Americas and had total assets under management of £12.7 billion as at 31 March 2011...
, which then sold the UK division (VNU Business Publications Ltd) to Incisive Media
Incisive Media
Incisive Media is a publisher of business media. It is based in London, United Kingdom, with offices in New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing.-History and management:...
.
In 2008, the company acquired IAG Research which measures viewer engagement with TV commercials. The same year Nielsen made a strategic investment in NeuroFocus
NeuroFocus
NeuroFocus, Inc. is an American multinational neuromarketing company with locations in London, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Seoul, Bogotá, New York, and Dallas. Headquartered in Berkeley, CA, NeuroFocus combines neuroscience research with consulting and marketing practices. NeuroFocus is the “global market...
, a California firm applying neuroscience brainwave techniques for consumer research. In 2009 and 2010, Nielsen sold its business magazines; its well-known entertainment properties went to the new company e5 Global Media
E5 Global Media
Prometheus Global Media, formerly e5 Global Media, is an American entertainment publishing company based in New York City. The company was formed by the sale of the entertainment and media division of Nielsen Business Media in December 2009....
. On June 3, 2010 Nielsen Holdings filed with the SEC to raise up to $1.75 billion in an initial public offering.
In June 2010 Nielsen paired with Mckinsey to create the social media consulting company NM Incite. Through "NM Incite," Nielsen combines its Buzzmetrics listening platform technology with McKinsey's management consultants, to offer a broad range of social consulting influenced by social media data and analytics. NM Incite has operations in 13 global markets, including: US, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India, Brazil, Canada and Korea.
In Aug 2011 Nielsen acquired Marketing Analytics, Inc., one of the pioneers of marketing mix modeling
Marketing mix modeling
Marketing mix modeling is a term of art for the use of statistical analysis such as multivariate regressions on sales and marketing time series data to...
and a recognized leader in analytics and advanced planning software. Headquartered in Evanston, Ill. and founded in 1991, Marketing Analytics, Inc. helps companies measure the impact of their marketing plans on sales by combining deep modeling expertise with robust software applications. Link, a long-time innovator in marketing modeling, will continue to lead the group and work to integrate these capabilities into Nielsen offerings. The acquisition enables Nielsen to provide marketers of fast moving consumer goods with the most complete and timely view of the impact of media and marketing - a distinct advantage when developing marketing plans across multiple channels, such as online and offline advertising, in-store promotions and consumer promotions.
Competitors
| Rank | Company | Sales in 2009 (million USD) | Growth in % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nielsen | 5,000.0 | 2.6 |
| 2 | Kantar Group Kantar Group Kantar, based in UK, was founded in 1993 as the Market Research, Insight and Consultancy Division of WPP plc, a London-based public company. It is a network of 13 specialist companies, with around 28,500 employees working in 100 countries across various research and consultancy disciplines... |
2,000 | 2.5 |
| 3 | IMS Health Inc. | 1,958.6 | 8.9 |
| 4 | GfK AG | 1,397.3 | 5.4 |
| 5 | Ipsos Ipsos Ipsos S.A. is a global market research company headquartered in Paris, France. The Company was founded in 1975 and has been publicly traded on the Paris Stock Exchange since 1 July 1999... |
1,077.0 | 6.5 |
| 6 | Synovate Synovate Synovate was a market research firm owned by the Aegis Group. It was formed from the acquisition of a number of smaller market research firms. It has a number of different divisions, such as Synovate Healthcare, Synovate Customer Experience, Synovate Censydiam and Motoresearch. They claimed... |
739.6 | 9.5 |
| 7 | IRI | 665.0 | 6.6 |
| 8 | Westat Westat Westat is an employee-owned corporation providing research services to agencies of the U.S. Government, as well as businesses, foundations, and state and local governments.... |
425.8 | 0.8 |
| 9 | Arbitron Arbitron Arbitron is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio audiences. It was founded as American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with L.A. based Coffin, Cooper and Clay in the early 1950s... |
400.0 | 5.9 |
The Nielsen Code
In 1931, Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr., wrote the Nielsen Code, defining the principles that would guide Nielsen to global leadership in marketing research. The Code remains relevant today and continues to guide to company and employees practices.The 8 pillars of this code are:
- Impartiality
- Thoroughness
- Accuracy
- Integrity
- Economy
- Price
- Delivery
- Service
External links
- Nielsen Wire - Nielsen news blog