Nielsen taps IBM vet to turn biz around
Details
Michelle Clancy
| 23 November 2018

Nielsen Holdings has appointed IBM Watson guru David Kenny as its new CEO, as it tries to maintain its dominance in the TV ratings business amid the rise of multiplatform video and changes in consumer buying habits.

The mesurement firm has reportedly been reviewing its options for divesting or spinning off some assets; shareholder pressure has been mounting for the measurement giant to make significant moves to retool its business. Activist investor Elliott Management, which took an 8.4% stake in company earlier this year, has demanded a full strategic review of the business, which Nielsen started in September. Nielsen’s stock has declined about 30% over the past year.

Kenny was SVP of cognitive solutions at IBM, the division responsible for the artificial intelligence platform known as Watson. Before that, he was CEO of the Weather Co before selling that company to IBM in 2015.

The new exec replaces Mitch Barns, who has been CEO since 2014 and who is now retiring. He will join Nielsen starting 3 Dec, presumably with ideas for a programmatic refresh of Nielsen’s ratings methodology that would leverage his Watson-honed experience in machine learning and AI to provide better or more contextual audience insights .

That could be particularly important for its “buy” division, which tracks purchases of consumer products as an a corollary to the content and advertising consumption patterns that Nielsen tracks. That division has been foundering thanks to the changing retail environment. Online and social purchasing trends, crowd-sharing and subscription models have all fractured the shopping landscape for consumer goods in ways that were unforeseen even two years ago.

“There has never been a more important time for measurement and analytics around media and to have a trusted intermediary,” Kenny told the Wall Street Journal. “[There is also a] great need for advertisers to better understand where they are spending their money and what is working and what is not.”

He also said that he would accelerate the timeline on the company’s strategic review.