Is Peter Ligouri the person to (in spite of everything) make choice TV dimension viable?

But the adtech global likes to disrupt a formidable incumbent. In contemporary years, a number of giant data-based startups have emerged to problem Nielsen’s dominance. With Nielsen protecting its territory fiercely, the degree is ready for some David v Goliath battles. One of the ones Davids is Peter Ligouri, veteran TV programmer and manufacturer and, since remaining 12 months, leader government of media dimension company VideoAmp.

The incumbent

Market analysis pioneer Arthur Nielsen somewhat actually invented panel-based TV rankings again within the 1950s and the corporate he based, now referred to as Nielsen Media Research, has been dominant within the house ever since. Since 2022, when it went personal (a 12 months after splitting off its marketplace analysis arm NIQ), financials were locked away, however the associated fee for Nielsen again then totalled $16bn.

After many years of dominance, the previous few years have uncovered chinks within the behemoth’s armor. In 2021, amid accusations that its viewership reporting all through the Covid-19 pandemic was once erroneous, the Media Rating Council suspended Nielsen’s accreditation, which it wouldn’t regain till 2023.

A variety of disruptors from the adtech global have lengthy been able to transport in for a better percentage of the pie, inspired via speedy and repeated adjustments to TV viewing, together with the inexorable upward push of ad-supported streaming codecs.

But nobody’s somewhat cracked it but, with Nielsen protecting maximum of its territory. But this 12 months brings a pivotal second, with Nielsen shedding its long-held ‘panel-only’ option to dimension in want of a brand new providing, ‘big data + panel.’ The pretenders to the throne – adtech retail outlets birthed within the giant information pond – hope that is the outlet they’ve been looking ahead to. Shops, this is, like VideoAmp.

The challenger

Nielsen’s panel-based manner has underwritten the way in which through which maximum TV commercials are offered for many years, underwriting a ‘currency’ that determines the worth of an advert.

The festival for Nielsen’s crown has consisted of the try to identify ‘alt currencies’ undergirded via giant information fashions reasonably than panels by myself. The promise is that those extra fine-grained information fashions make for extra detailed and focused media buys, which will command the next worth for media house owners.

VideoAmp has emerged as one of the crucial main alt-currency suppliers and has attracted vital funding alongside the way in which, but it surely (along different challengers) has had well-publicized struggles in making that forex stick. In January of remaining 12 months, a 2nd spherical of redundancies coincided with a metamorphosis on the most sensible, with board member Peter Ligouri stepping in as chairman.

“It hasn’t been easy and it never is,” Ligouri tells The Drum. But his tenure has introduced just right information too. In the $80bn US TV commercials trade, he says, VideoAmp has risen to transacting about $3bn of that, translating to $100bn of currency-based earnings for the corporate projected this 12 months. That was once buoyed via a length when streaming massive Paramount, locked into its personal well-publicized struggle with Nielsen, ran VideoAmp’s tech for 4 months.

As the forex facet of the industry in spite of everything comes just right, Ligouri says it’ll make up about 60% of the group’s earnings, with the opposite 40% coming from quite a lot of items of ‘buy-side’ paintings, running with media companies to optimize their buys. That facet of the industry took a spice up remaining month with the release of ‘cross-screen planning tool’ VXP, launching with information from the likes of Disney and Paramount.

The promise to publishers is to extend worth from their advert stock, together with via embracing the large alternative for addressable media (through which other customers are served other commercials on the similar time) whilst decreasing waste. The promise to companies is to undercut Nielsen on worth (even though he concedes that the incumbent’s charges are moderately guarded). The promise to all sides is to skirt the inherent “biases” of a panel-based fashion as “big data veterans” – when compared with Nielsen, which, in an outline the latter would undoubtedly reject, he labels “big data rookies.”

But as VideoAmp has grown, the contest hasn’t confirmed specifically pleasant. Nielsen claims that lots of its challengers have infringed its patents – a rate it has delivered to the courts many times. Competitors TVision, HyphaMetrics and TVSquared have all been sued via Nielsen in recent times – as has VideoAmp.

A primary go well with (claiming that VideoAmp’s use of tech to make use of cell tool location information to attract demographic conclusions about who’s observing virtual content material) was once pushed aside via a Delaware court docket remaining month, handiest to get replaced via a contemporary go well with days later. In a observation, Nielsen reasserted the declare that VideoAmp was once the use of its tech with out authorization and stated that it will “continue to vigorously defend” its highbrow belongings rights “to the fullest extent possible.”

For his phase, Ligouri tells The Drum, he needs to “compete on the field rather than the courtroom” – however he recognizes the energy of his resolution to tackle Nielsen. “It’s a monolith. I call it the measurement-industrial complex. It’s a 102-year-old company that has been the currency of choice with a 90%-plus market share and it’s inadequate. It needs to be disrupted.”

Producer, marketer, programmer, adtech man

Ligouri’s pitch that he’s the person to in spite of everything crack the Nielson-challenger code rests partially on his personal historical past. With one foot within the TV trade and the opposite in promoting, he says he’s all the time had a “gnawing desire to disrupt industries” as he’s reduce a trail via each.

First there was once just right out of date promoting, as an account supervisor at Saatchi & Saatchi and later Ogilvy, running on client manufacturers like Tide. Realizing that “account managers were not really the driving force of an ad agency,” Ligouri hopped to TV as one of the crucial individuals who arrange HBO’s house video department. He would later transform head of client advertising for the community.

Ligouri’s CV of TV programming and advertising roles inform the tale of a medium repeatedly in flux over the previous few many years. The roles of promoting and subscriptions were entangled in a dance that has swung again spherical to the ‘both ads and subscriptions’ fashion increasingly more liked via streamers. “The studios at that time did not want home entertainment front-and-center – their fear was that it could hurt the cinema business – and creators didn’t want their fine works of art diminished to a 26-inch television screen… we were the heel of the industry,” Ligouri says. “But in fact, home video saved the movie industry”.

“People were saying, ‘Are you kidding me? Someone is actually going to pay for television?’ But everything old is new again, as we now see streamers that are the equivalent of HBO 25 years ago.”

In an extended TV profession, Ligouri’s different highlights come with stints at Discovery and as leader government of Tribune Media. He was once instrumental in launching Fox Sports and had a stint at FX all through its pivot (with The Shield, Nip/Tuck and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) to what Ligouri calls “ad-supported premium quality adult television and storytelling.”

What did the revel in educate him? That subscribers and advertisers alike want something above all else: high quality. “On The Shield, we went from year one with advertisers saying that it had too much sex and violence to winning a bunch of awards, so ‘sex and violence’ became ‘romance and action’ in year two. Quality conquers all.”

‘Leaving a legacy for storytellers’

For Ligouri, disrupting the TV dimension trade isn’t just a imaginable billion-dollar alternative; it’s non-public. The 65-year-old says he has one eye on his legacy. “I’ve done both jobs. I’ve sold ads. I’ve made ads. I’ve bought media. I am still a producer and a programmer and I really care about storytelling getting the value that it creates… I have a personal investment at my ripe old age in leaving a legacy of storytellers getting paid the value for what they’re creating. And as a marketer, I’ve long resented the waste of a panel, the waste of just lazily going after demos. The ability for a marketing dollar to go further is something I’d like to leave behind.

“It would be nice to have my working life swansong be taking a major leap forward and breaking the death grip that a 102-year-old monolith has held on the industry: open it up for price competition, for innovation and for the tactics and data available in 2025. It ain’t easy, but what the heck? I’ve only been doing it my entire working life.”