Nielsen reorganizes into three units, five top executives depart

Nielsen is reorganizing in a series of moves that will see five of nine senior managers exit the company, including its chief data and research officer, according to the measurement behemoth. 

The restructuring, which takes effect next month, creates three global business units, the biggest of which is Nielsen Audience Measurement. Karthik Rao, chief operating officer, will become CEO of that division. He will report to David Kenny, who remains CEO of the overall company.

Mainak Mazumdar, Nielsen’s chief data and research officer since 2016 and a driving force behind its new Nielsen One cross-platform measurement system, is among the executives leaving the company, Kenny said. Mazumdar’s departure is seen as a bad sign for the company by some industry insiders given his central role in overseeing the development of Nielsen One and the measurement giant’s overall data business.

But Kenny said the moves stem from a reorganization that will make Nielsen measurement stronger and that two executives will fill parts of Mazumdar’s role. The other departures, Kenny said, resulted when executives who had company-wide responsibilities decided to leave rather than take roles in one of Nielsen’s new global business units.

Besides Audience Measurement, the other new units include Nielsen Analytics and Gracenote. Nielsen Analytics is to be headed by Tina Wilson, currently global head of audience outcomes product. As group general manager, Wilson will support general managers of the six businesses that include campaign impact analytics, marketing mix modeling, marketing cloud, NCS, Scarborough and Sports Fan Insights & Sponsorship Analytics. Gracenote, which compiles audio and video content data, will be headed by Sujit Das Munshi, currently chief content officer and head of operations.

Mazumdar’s role will be filled in part by Pete Doe, head of research at Microsoft’s Xandr, Kenny said. Doe is a former Nielsen data and analytics executive who left in 2015 to help launch Clypd as chief research officer and has headed research at Xandr since 2019. He’ll become chief research officer of Nielsen Audience Measurement, reporting to Rao.

This comes as Clypd, a supply-side platform for linear TV purchased by Xandr before the latter’s acquisition by Microsoft, has been consolidated into Xandr. A Xandr spokesperson declined to comment on Doe’s departure.

Christine Pierce, currently Nielsen’s senior VP of U.S. media operations and former senior VP of data science, will also take on part of Mazumdar’s role, Kenny said. She will lead the Global Data Solutions group, also reporting to Rao. The group is responsible for managing and ensuring the accuracy of inbound data, including both from panels and such big data sets as set-top boxes and smart TVs, plus software development kits, tags and other integrations.

Nielsen management has been working since last summer on how best to adapt to changes in technology and the market as it develops Nielsen One, Kenny said. The conclusion was that it would be best to split the data and research duties into two groups—one focused on inbound data headed by Pierce, and another focused on models and analytics used for external reporting of measurement data, headed by Doe.

‘We don’t ever want to have an issue with data again’

Nielsen last year lost Media Rating Council accreditation for its national and much of its local market TV measurement and Digital Ad Ratings, and is in the process of trying to regain those accreditations. The MRC last month delayed restoring Nielsen’s TV accreditation, and MRC CEO George Ivie expects the accreditation to be reconsidered early next year after Nielsen addresses issues raised in the prior audit.

“I think a lot of what we've learned in this re-accreditation process is the importance of balance,” Kenny said, contending that balance would be fostered by having Pierce in charge of overseeing big data feeds from set-top boxes and smart TVs as well as panel data.

Pierce, who has been with Nielsen for more than 20 years in audience measurement and data science methods, will be responsible for “making sure that quality is there, and increasing all investment and quite honestly getting that directly to Karthik,” Kenny said.

“That’s important because we don’t ever want to have an issue with data again,” Kenny added. “There’s a lot of work that’s gone into improving that quality.”

Doe will lead efforts around data fusion and modeling, Kenny said, describing him as “very well known” in the industry.

“It’s helpful that he’s been at Microsoft, started Clypd, been outside and looked at it from a lot of different angles and worked with a lot of the other players in measurement,” Kenny said. “There's been a lot of focus on different ways to measure outcomes, and his experience I think is going to help take it to the next level.”

Mazumdar, Kenny said, is leaving because “he’s interested in more of a pure research role.” Mazumdar did not respond to a request for comment.

Also departing in the reorganization are Chief Commercial Officer Peter Bradbury, Chief Growth Officer and President of International Sean Cohan, Chief Product Officer Eric Bosco and Chief People Officer Laurie Lovett. Cohan declined to comment, and Bradbury, Bosco and Lovett did not return a request to comment. 

Kenny said the executives decided to leave because their company-wide roles in the U.S. or globally were no longer available and they weren’t interested in taking roles with the three new business units.

One person familiar with the moves noted that Nielsen being taken private by a consortium led by Elliott Investment Management and Brookfield Business Partners triggered substantial payouts for senior managers, giving those leaving an opportunity to seek new roles outside the company.

The new structure is not about cutting costs under new private-equity ownership, Kenny said, noting that the ownership group includes people who’ve long been involved with Nielsen as major shareholders.

“We’ve gotten more precise about our priorities, and I start with measurement quality, which is what our brand is built on,” Kenny said. “We will do nothing that gets in the way of that. In order to keep funding that, if there are other things that maybe aren’t as essential, we’ll certainly look at being more efficient.”

The executive departures, delay in MRC re-accreditation and pace of beginning audits of components that go into Nielsen One have led some in the industry to question whether the company is meeting its timeline for rolling out the new product in 2022 with a mind toward its use as currency in 2024.

But Kenny said nothing has changed in the schedule. “We’re certainly planning to give impact data, and we’ll go back and calculate that historically,” he said. “It’s very much moving on schedule. We also want to make sure that we continue to work with the MRC to accredit the current product and then accredit what’s behind it. … I haven’t seen a reason for it not to continue on the schedule we laid out a couple of years ago.”