The media measurement agency Nielsen Holdings, going through intense competitors and criticism because it tries to make the transition to digital viewers monitoring from its longstanding TV enterprise, stated on Tuesday that it had agreed to be acquired by a non-public fairness consortium for $16 billion, together with debt.
The group, led by Evergreen Coast Capital — an affiliate of the activist agency Elliott Funding Administration — and Brookfield Enterprise Companions, supplied $28 a share for Nielsen. The value was a 60 p.c premium over Nielsen’s inventory worth on March 11, earlier than rumors of a deal surfaced, and a ten.2 p.c enchancment on the consortium’s earlier proposal, which Nielsen rejected this month.
Dave Gregory, a managing associate at Brookfield, stated in a press release that Nielsen was “deeply embedded within the media ecosystem.”
“As a non-public firm, Nielsen will likely be even higher positioned to ship the very best measures of customers’ quickly altering behaviors throughout all channels and platforms,” he added.
Nielsen has been below stress from media platforms and the promoting trade to precisely measure audiences not simply on conventional tv but additionally on streaming companies and the web. Highly effective media executives have complained for years that Nielsen, which is almost a century previous, makes use of antiquated strategies that wrestle to measure viewers’ new habits.
The Media Ranking Council stripped Nielsen of its accreditation for native and nationwide tv measurement final yr. Final month, Discovery and Omnicom Media Group stated that promoting shoppers together with AT&T and State Farm would experiment with utilizing video viewers estimates from Comscore and VideoAmp, two different media measurement corporations. Final week, NBCUniversal stated it could supply advertisers ensures utilizing knowledge from iSpot quite than relying solely on Nielsen.
Nielsen inventory was up greater than 20 p.c on Tuesday. The corporate can entertain different bids throughout a 45-day go-shop interval. In any other case, the deal is predicted to shut within the second half of the yr.
