For those who questioned whether or not Nielsen Audio would lose out on nearly $6.7 million its owed by Cumulus Media, think again.
The nation’s dominant audience measurement company and the nation’s No. 2 radio broadcasting company by number of stations have just reached a deal on a multi-year extension for radio ratings services.
The new accord includes all Portable People Meter (PPM) and diary-measured markets. Westwood One, the national-facing arm of Cumulus Media, is also included in the agreement.
This multi-year agreement provides Nielsen’s radio and network radio ratings services for Cumulus and Westwood One’s 446 radio stations across 90 local markets.
“Despite the abundance of media options, radio continues to lead the way in reach and ROI,” said Cumulus Media EVP/Operations Bob Walker. “We are excited to extend our agreement with Nielsen so that we can continue to leverage their vast data sets and analytical insights to provide the proof that we do indeed deliver the highest ROI of any local media to our advertisers.”
In addition to extending Nielsen’s core audio ratings services, Cumulus and Westwood One will continue to have access to local qualitative behavioral data from Nielsen Scarborough, enhanced talent analytics from Nielsen N-Score and national networks ratings from Nielsen RADAR. Additionally, Westwood One will extend its use of Nielsen Marketing Cloud and Pointlogic for enhanced purchase-based marketing and media planning functions.
“We are pleased to extend our audio measurement agreement with Cumulus Media,” said Brad Kelly, Managing Director for Nielsen Audio. “This extension is a symbol of the mutual respect and trust that exists between Nielsen and Cumulus, and we believe that our measurement services will enable Cumulus to tell their complete audience story to their advertisers and capture their fair share of media ad dollars.”
The new agreement comes after Cumulus revealed in court documents tied to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection petition that some big creditors have some sizable unsecured claims with the company.
Among those creditors is Nielsen Audio. In fact, they are the biggest unsecured creditor behind U.S. Bank, and the company is owed some $6,653,543 for ratings services and all other Nielsen-related activities conducted across Cumulus’ radio stations.
News of the new agreement first surfaced in a broadcast media trade publication that broke an agreed-upon embargo; an announcement was originally set for Monday morning.
