Nation’s Largest Local Broadcast Company Will Shift from Ratings-Based Measurement to Selling Impressions Company is First to Provide Advertisers with Aggregated, Unduplicated Audience Measurement Across All Media Platforms

Nexstar Media Group, Inc. announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. (“Nexstar” or the “Company”), will begin to immediately transition its advertising sales to a cost-per-impression (CPM) model. Impressions provide more qualitative data about the audience, more accurately reflect the total number of people watching a program or commercial, and are more comparable to metrics currently used on non-broadcast platforms. Nexstar has been working with its audience measurement partner, Comscore, to develop a viewer measurement metric that provides advertisers with verified, aggregated, unduplicated audience measurement metrics across all of the Company’s broadcasting, digital, mobile, and streaming video platforms.

“This transition is an important step in modernizing the way buyers and sellers conduct business to better reflect the trends in video-consumption and to ensure that all viewing audiences are being accurately counted”

“This strategic move represents the next step in the natural evolution of audience measurement,” said Tim Busch, President, Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. “We have been analyzing this transition for the last year, educating and training our sales teams and preparing to go to market with a CPM-based ad sales model. Our sales force will be able to talk to all advertisers—big or small, national or local—in an informed, fact-based manner about maximizing the reach and effectiveness of their spending across every available media channel and every viewer will be counted, no matter where or when they watch. In addition, advertisers will be able to universally target their customers regardless of the distribution platform and monitor the results through unduplicated audience measurement.”

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Nexstar’s shift from the ratings-based legacy model will deliver enhanced value to advertisers by providing them with more information about who is watching what and when, as well as a common metric by which to measure the total reach and effectiveness of an individual commercial or an entire advertising campaign. As the nation’s largest local broadcasting company, Nexstar is in the best position to pioneer the industry’s transition to CPM-based selling; Nexstar recognizes that the business is changing and knows how to help advertisers utilize the new currency to drive better results.

Advertisers want more information about who is watching a given program or commercial and they want data that enables them to better target their advertising to specific consumers. Moving to cross-platform, impressions-based audience measurement enables Nexstar to provide advertisers with important information about potential consumers such as household income, shopping preferences, and brand loyalties. Advertisers can then target their spending for maximum impact, reaching potential consumers as they prepare to make a purchase. This is exactly where advertisers want to be in the purchase cycle.

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In 2018, Nexstar began working with Comscore to develop a viewer measurement metric that aggregates unduplicated audiences across all video platforms.

“This transition is an important step in modernizing the way buyers and sellers conduct business to better reflect the trends in video-consumption and to ensure that all viewing audiences are being accurately counted,” explained Steve Walsh, Executive Vice President, Local Services at Comscore. “Our goal is always to be on the leading edge of audience measurement and our work with Nexstar makes us both first-movers in this transition. We’re excited to be Nexstar’s partner as it continues to work in the best interests of its clients by optimizing the results of their advertising investments.”

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