comScore, Rentrak To Merge, Take On Nielsen

Making a major move for new digital and traditional media measurement services — as well as amping up competition with Nielsen — comScore is buying Rentrak.  The deal is valued by some at about $732 million, based on today’s closing stock market share price.

Rentrak — which focuses mostly traditional media measurement, including TV and film — and comScore, with its business deep in the digital media space, say the merger will help the combined company focus on immediate pressing industry goals such as coming up with new standards for the next generation of cross-platform measurement.

Rentrak, which monitors set-top-box data to determine how consumers watch television, becomes a subsidiary of comScore, which measures consumer Web activity.

The move challenges Nielsen in tracking how people consume media.

The merger will offer what comScore CEO Serge Matta calls “the cross-platform measurement systems of the future.” Agencies will have access to the cross-platform metrics needed to plan and execute campaigns.

“This merger also recognizes the critical importance of combining digital and TV assets for next generation media measurement, which requires a higher degree of precision at both a national and local market level,” Matta says in a statement.

Shareholders of comScore will own approximately 66.5% of the combined company, while Rentrak shareholders would own about 33.5%, under terms of the deal. Each share of Rentrak will be converted into the right to receive 1.15 shares of comScore. …

… read on at mediapost.com

Originally posted by Wayne Friedman and Laurie Sullivan at MediaPost
29th September 2015