Media metering firm Nielsen Holdings, which faces fierce competition and criticism as it attempts to make the move to digitally tracking viewers from its long-standing TV business, said Tuesday it had agreed to the acquisition by a private equity firm. consortium for $16 billion, including debt.
The group, led by Evergreen Coast Capital — a subsidiary of activist firm Elliott Investment Management — and Brookfield Business Partners, offered Nielsen $28 a share. The price was a 60 percent premium over Nielsen’s share price on March 11, before deal rumors surfaced, and a 10.2 percent improvement over the consortium’s previous proposal, which Nielsen rejected this month.
Dave Gregory, a managing partner at Brookfield, said in a statement that Nielsen was “deep ingrained in the media ecosystem”.
“As a private company, Nielsen will be even better positioned to deliver the best metrics for rapidly changing consumer behavior across all channels and platforms,” he added.
Nielsen is under pressure from media platforms and the advertising industry to accurately measure audiences not only on traditional television, but also on streaming services and the Internet. Powerful media executives have been complaining for years that Nielsen, who is nearly a century old, uses outdated methods that struggle to measure viewers’ new habits.
The Media Rating Council stripped Nielsen of his accreditation for local and national television ratings last year. Last month, Discovery and Omnicom Media Group said ad clients, including AT&T and State Farm, would experiment with using video audience estimates from Comscore and VideoAmp, two other media measurement companies. Last week, NBCUniversal said it would offer advertisers guarantees when using data from iSpot rather than relying solely on Nielsen.
Shares of Nielsen rose more than 20 percent on Tuesday. The company may receive other bids during a 45-day go-shopping period. Otherwise, the deal is expected to close in the second half of the year.
