As this 12 months’s upfront season involves a detailed, Nielsen stays the business chief, however amid a messy measurement conflict, opponents aren’t backing down.

And why ought to they? Lately, measurement opponents Comscore, iSpot, and VideoAmp all obtained a particular nod from the U.S. Joint Business Committee (JIC), which certified the three as currencies of document forward of the 2025-2026 broadcast TV season. 

A foreign money is the unit of worth that advert patrons and advert sellers use to transact throughout the multibillion-dollar TV promoting business. For years, Nielsen’s C3 and C7 panel rankings—which measure industrial viewership over a three- and seven-day interval—have been the business normal.

The JIC certification comes as business big Nielsen is uniquely vulnerable because it tries to reinvent its foreign money for the long run.

Comscore, iSpot, and VideoAmp get results from JIC audit.

The corporate’s new panel + big data offering—which mixes Nielsen’s conventional panel with information from cable, satellite tv for pc set-top containers, and sensible TVs throughout 45 million households and 75 million units—is the foreign money it’s backing for this 12 months’s TV upfront season.

However two high-ranking media patrons have informed ADWEEK that inconsistencies with Nielsen’s panel + massive information have led to delays and disruptions in upfront negotiations, as hundreds of thousands of {dollars} grasp within the steadiness.

Nielsen has urged advertisers to be affected person. “A foreign money change is way totally different than an information change,” Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao informed ADWEEK at Cannes Lions in June. “It’s a workflow change. It’s a piece course of change.”

Rivals like VideoAmp, Comscore, and iSpot, nonetheless, are chomping on the bit to undercut this core a part of Nielsen’s enterprise, with the JIC backing enhancing their long-term viability.

“The timing couldn’t come at a extra essential second because the promoting business is in flux, planning an upfront primarily based on a strategy that’s risky,” Peter Liguori, the newly-named CEO of VideoAmp, informed ADWEEK, of the corporate’s JIC acknowledgement.

Liguori added that the JIC accreditation ought to instill confidence in advertisers that they will transact on different currencies. In any case, in line with the VideoAmp CEO, “many audit committee members” are additionally a part of the audit committee for the Media Ranking Council (MRC), the opposite massive measurement ranking company within the business.