Measurement Competitors Try to Snatch the...

As this year’s upfront season comes to a close, Nielsen remains the industry leader, but amid a messy measurement war, competitors aren’t backing down.

And why should they? Recently, measurement competitors Comscore, iSpot, and VideoAmp all received a special nod from the U.S. Joint Industry Committee (JIC), which certified the three as currencies of record ahead of the 2025-2026 broadcast TV season. 

A currency is the unit of value that ad buyers and ad sellers use to transact across the multibillion-dollar TV advertising industry. For years, Nielsen’s C3 and C7 panel ratings—which measure commercial viewership over a three- and seven-day period—were the industry standard.

The JIC certification comes as industry giant Nielsen is uniquely vulnerable as it tries to reinvent its currency for the future.

The company’s new panel + big data offering—which combines Nielsen’s traditional panel with data from cable, satellite set-top boxes, and smart TVs across 45 million households and 75 million devices—is the currency it’s backing for this year’s TV upfront season.

But two high-ranking media buyers have told ADWEEK that inconsistencies with Nielsen’s panel + big data have led to delays and disruptions in upfront negotiations, as millions of dollars hang in the balance.

Nielsen has urged advertisers to be patient. “A currency change is much different than a data change,” Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao told ADWEEK at Cannes Lions in June. “It’s a workflow change. It’s a work process change.”

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

“The timing could not come at a more critical moment as the advertising industry is in flux, planning an upfront based on a methodology that is volatile,” Peter Liguori, the newly-named CEO of VideoAmp, told ADWEEK, of the company’s JIC acknowledgement.

Liguori added that the JIC accreditation should instill confidence in advertisers that they can transact on other currencies. After all, according to the VideoAmp CEO, “many audit committee members” are also part of the audit committee for the Media Rating Council (MRC), the other big measurement rating agency in the industry.