VideoAmp is shaking up senior management and laying off nearly 20% of its workforce as the company girds for a longer and increasingly bruising battle with Nielsen over TV measurement.

The headcount reduction comes as VideoAmp Founder Ross McCray steps aside as CEO, shifting to a board member and shareholder, and board member Peter Liguori , former CEO of Tribune Media, becomes executive chairman. Liguori is also a former chief operating officer of Discovery Communications, CEO of the FX Network and chairman of Fox Entertainment.

VideoAmp also has named 25-year Nielsen veteran Peter Bradbury, who left last year from that company’s top sales position, as its new chief commercial and growth officer.

That move comes along with the promotions of two senior VideoAmp tech executives, both veterans of Google, to new roles and titles. Tony Fagan, previously chief technology officer, has been named president of technology and strategy. Josh Hudgin, who was exec VP of product, becomes the new chief product officer.

The senior management shakeup comes with a second, and bigger, wave of layoffs for VideoAmp since September, following a first round that reduced headcount by 10%. Around that time, Michael Parkes, VideoAmp’s former president, who had overseen sales and marketing duties, stepped aside into a board role. Parkes has since left the board. 

Also read: 12 milestones that reshaped measurement in 2023

VideoAmp in a statement attributed the changes to its goal “to streamline operations and dedicate focus to future growth and high-value partnership in the year ahead.” The moves “position VideoAmp to continue leading the rapid industry evolution in media measurement and advanced currencies,” according to the statement. 

VideoAmp coupled news of layoffs and C-suite changes with a big outside hire of an executive who was a fixture at rival Nielsen for more than a quarter century. In a statement, Bradbury gave his new company a vote of confidence in the measurement race.

“I am excited to join the VideoAmp team, which has created the new currency standard and I look forward to leading our efforts to rapidly expand our footprint across the industry,” Bradbury said. “VideoAmp has quickly emerged as the preferred source of measurement for multiple highly respected, forward-thinking industry leaders, and I am excited to build on that foundation.”

Growing financial pressure

Others in the measurement industry and those close to VideoAmp, however, pointed to signs of growing financial distress, exacerbated by Nielsen’s decision in October to continue supporting its legacy panel-based data and average commercial minute currency (C3 and C7) for TV measurement.

In doing so, Nielsen essentially kicked the can down the road to 2025 or later for adopting new big data metrics, where VideoAmp and other players such as iSpot.tv and Comscore compete on a more even playing field. Nielsen also is consuming agency resources that could be used to work with rival currencies by putting essentially three options of its own on the market, including its own big data-plus panel product either for legacy ratings or individual commercial minutes, said agency and industry executives.

VideoAmp has invested heavily on a bet that it would begin taking significant market share as a currency in TV deals starting in the coming upfront. According to estimates by executives familiar with data, labor costs and contracts in the industry, VideoAmp, prior to the moves announced today, was burning as much as $75 million in cash annually. These people question whether the company has the financial resources to continue competing into 2025 without getting a far more substantial share of TV currency in the coming upfront.

VideoAmp’s “Series G” round of financing in September was mostly credit, coming from Vista Credit Partners, and people in the industry said it came at rates as high as 15%, which VideoAmp executives denied, without citing a number.

But the whole measurement industry is dogged by higher interest rates and tougher credit constraining investment capital. The riskiest tranche of bond debt issued in late 2022 to back the private equity takeover of Nielsen came at an 11% interest rate and more recently has traded at 13%, according to people familiar with the matter.

Liguori’s increasingly high profile on behalf of VideoAmp since June had fueled speculation that he would take on a leadership role and McCray would be ousted as CEO. Several industry executives also said Liguori has been working to sell VideoAmp, which executives of the company denied.

VideoAmp and iSpot executives have had talks about a possible combination, but those didn’t advance, according to people familiar with the matter. VideoAmp executives denied having talks with iSpot, and iSpot declined to comment.

Nielsen also isn’t interested in buying VideoAmp, according to a person familiar with the matter. Other potential strategic buyers are a less obvious fit, and high interest rates make a private equity takeout unlikely, according to people familiar with the matter.

Spokespeople for Nielsen and Elliott Investment Management, the lead private equity firm in the group that owns Nielsen, declined to comment.

Progress despite finances

Financial pressures aside, VideoAmp has established itself as the primary rival to Nielsen in TV currency, offered as an option by the widest number of TV networks plus Amazon Prime and YouTube, and the only option from Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group. The latter deal, announced in June, has meant a broader range of agencies and clients trading on VideoAmp, at least if they want to buy The Weather Channel.

While Comscore and iSpot.tv also received conditional certification from the Joint Industry Committee for currency measurement earlier this year, VideoAmp scored higher than either, according to people familiar with the matter.

And while McCray acknowledged in an October discussion at the Performance Driven Marketing Institute-West conference that the Allen deal was unprofitable, it did help VideoAmp toward being used as a currency in $2 billion of TV deals in the past year, albeit in a U.S. TV market that’s bigger than $80 billion annually.

In a letter to employees announcing his decision to step down, McCray said currency bookings on VideoAmp rose 15-fold last year, with more than 1,000 clients booking guarantees.

Given that more agencies and marketers have been able to see VideoAmp data alongside Nielsen in making deals, they have a broader understanding of the differences. Reviews have been mixed, and some agency executives balk at the higher audience numbers VideoAmp shows compared to Nielsen panel and even compared to Nielsen’s big data-plus panel product.

But even one agency skeptic about trading on VideoAmp said: “The industry as a whole has come out and said they believe Nielsen is not capturing viewership correctly. But when we see numbers that are different than Nielsen, everybody’s like, well, that can’t be right, because Nielsen says so, falling back on the sword we’re criticizing.”

Directionally, VideoAmp and Nielsen’s big data both show substantial increases in overall audiences, particularly in 18-49 age demographic and with minority audiences, according to agency executives. But the increases with VideoAmp are higher. Views among agency executives differ on whether that reflects Nielsen’s numbers being closer to the truth, or whether its reliance on its panel to model the big data results amounts to “data smoothing” that simply makes the errors in prior panel-based measurement look smaller.

VideoAmp also has gotten praise from executives on both the sell and buy side for a first-of-its-kind out-of-home measurement system it’s rolling out, focused on sports programming. VideoAmp’s system matches location signals from consumer mobile devices to programming on TV sets in bars and restaurants to allow for passive audience measurement. Nielsen and iSpot rely on Portable People Meters or the Tunity app to measure out-of-home audiences, and both systems require active participation of some kind by panelists, which can lead to more undercounting.

“We have moved from an intention of becoming a media currency to becoming the leading modern media currency in the United States,” McCray said in his letter to employees. “VideoAmp is now the well-established leader in modern media measurement, currency and optimization. Our company has grown up and is now entering a new phase of scale, maturity and operations. With deep contemplation and mindfulness, I believe this milestone also marks the natural time to transition from a founder-led company to a world-class company that can thrive for over 100 years without a reliance on its founder.”