For its big Buy business unit, revenues improved 3.5% to $878 million. Nielsen’s Buy division provides market research to consumer firms. Taking out the Harris purchase, revenue improved 2% with a 10% rise in emerging markets.
For its more closely monitored Watch business unit -- data for TV networks/producers and advertisers -- revenue climbed 29% to $694 million. Taking out Arbitron results, Watch revenue improved 5.2%.
Overall revenue was up 13% to $1.57 billion -- and without factoring in Arbitron and Harris, increased 2.5%. Net income of $91 million was down 30% from a year ago.
Brian Wieser, senior research analyst for Pivotal Research Group, wrote: “We are of the view that Nielsen’s services will maintain must-have status for most TV-centric large brand advertisers, especially as the metrics they provide have the capacity to be integrated across platforms on a relatively consistent basis.”
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He adds that the company conveys that “its portfolio of services provides a hedge, of sorts, against declines in the importance of television to large advertisers.”
Midday trading of Nielsen’s stock fell 2.2% to $41.75.
From this commentator's perspective, Nielsen conveys that profits are a priority and that the quality of its products & services and the satisfaction of its clients are an inconvenient afterthought. Such dysfunctional monopolies are terrible for an industry dependent upon inadequate and ill-conceived measurement tools for its currency. (Tell me again how Nielsen defends local diary measurements for a TV business with 500 channels per market. Wayne, you are to be forgiven for buying the hype, when even the pros pretend to be impressed by this methodological nonsense.)