VideoAmp is giving agencies and advertisers free access to its national linear content ratings dashboard through March 31, in a move aimed at helping offset costs and added work they’ve incurred working around Nielsen’s recent restriction of Paramount data.

The move comes as the U.S. ad industry enters the fourth month of a contract standoff between Paramount and Nielsen, whose TV measurement contract ended Sept. 30. Since then, Paramount and agencies that wrote the majority of their business on Nielsen measurement currency in the last upfront have been translating those commitments into VideoAmp measurement currency.

That job got harder when Nielsen announced Dec. 20 that it would stop providing Paramount ratings data through its media information tape (MIT), which is the means through which U.S. commercial ratings are primarily tracked. Nielsen is still measuring Paramount ratings, but providing them to agency and advertiser clients through other tools, such as its NPower planning and audience insights platform.

VideoAmp’s move won’t change that, but it will at least offset some cost and trouble agencies are going through as a result of the move, according to people familiar with the matter.

In a letter sent late last month to clients and obtained by Ad Age, VideoAmp Chief Commercial and Growth Officer Peter Bradbury said he was sharing “some holiday cheer” by making the company’s Content Analysis Ratings Dashboard (CARD) available for free as a “no-cost trial” for agencies and other clients that don’t already use it (which would include GroupM, IPG Mediabrands and Publicis Media, among others).

VideoAmp said it is “committed to supporting our clients through this measurement evolution, ensuring they have the resources necessary to transact. We remain dedicated to helping the industry navigate this shift to a multi-currency world as 2025 commences, and we approach the forthcoming upfront.”

The Paramount-Nielsen standoff has generated mixed reactions from agencies, with some executives grumbling about needing to make the workaround based on concerns about the accuracy and completeness of VideoAmp demographic data, and that was when they had full access to Nielsen’s Paramount data feed.

But Nielsen’s move to shut off Paramount data via its media information tape, effective immediately on Dec. 20, required agency executives to change their holiday schedules to manage the shift. And that didn’t win the industry’s predominant measurement provider any friends, according to people familiar with the matter.

“I would say it makes us more motivated to get VideoAmp in a tighter place so we can move over to VideoAmp,” said an agency executive. “Why am I going to reward the person who literally just put us in a really tough place for our clients and our agency?”

The agency had been encouraging clients to move over to using VideoAmp for advanced audiences rather than Nielsen, though the latter remains its preferred source for trading on age-gender demographics, the executive said. The Nielsen standoff with Paramount adds to that motivation to shift toward VideoAmp and advanced audiences, the executive said, but that's not practical for a lot of buys, particularly live sports, which are generally traded on Nielsen age and gender demos.

The agency was still figuring out how to deal with Nielsen’s Dec. 20 move earlier this week, the executive said, and that includes evaluating the difference between VideoAmp program metrics and average commercial minutes, which are the basis for upfront deals written on Nielsen. It also involves determining whether the differences between Nielsen and VideoAmp ratings are standardized or whether there’s a considerable variance from one Paramount channel to the next or one sport to the next.

“We have to evaluate to then say, OK, what is our solve for the interim, or do we need to move to the new currency in totality?” the executive said.

The alternative of simply buying less Paramount inventory isn’t practical, the executive said, both because of existing upfront deals but also because Paramount has considerable inventory that advertisers want, including live sports.

Nielsen made the move announced Dec. 20 after for months providing transactional data that made it easier to translate upfront deals written on its currency into VideoAmp currency, and despite not being paid tens of millions of dollars it was forrmely receiving from Paramount. The move came as it became clearer that the contract impasse was going to last into the new year.

“All of our clients continue to have a full view of the marketplace, as Nielsen continues to measure Paramount networks and streaming services,” according to a statement from the company. “However, we have removed Paramount data from transactional files. We have made this data available in good faith over the past three months, even without Paramount as a client. Removing this transactional data is a necessary step to safeguard the investments of our paying partners. We remain open to future collaboration with Paramount under fair terms. We’re engaged with select clients who are impacted and we’re guiding them through this update.”

For VideoAmp, one lesson is that the company needs to keep getting better at measuring and reporting demos.

“Demos are obviously an important piece, because it commands a big part of the market,” said Bryan Goski, senior VP of sell revenue at VideoAmp. “So we know we have to get that right. So what we’ve done over the past several y ears is try to sharpen our demo approach, and we’ll continue to do that, especially as we move into [Media Rating Council audits” expected to begin later this year.

The rate card translation work that agencies are having to do from Nielsen to VideoAmp currencies, while difficult, especially with a short window over the holidays, is one that ultimately has to be done to make changes to new TV currencies, Goski said. For planning purposes, agencies need to know how deals written on Nielsen in prior years translate into VideoAmp currency in future years if they’re ever going to make the change, he said.

“In some ways, what’s happening with Paramount is forcing these steps to take place,” he said. “Once they have the translation available for someone like Paramount, then they can do the same thing for WBD and NBCU and others.”

Comscore’s Score Report estimates that Paramount accounts for nearly 17% of linear and streaming TV ad impressions in the U.S. That’s up considerably from the under 3% of available TV inventory that was written on VideoAmp currency before Paramount’s standoff with Nielsen.

It’s all been at least a temporary windfall for VideoAmp, which, following a second wave of layoffs and departure of its CEO Ross McCray early last year, was subject of some speculation on whether it had sufficient capital to make it through the end of last year.

Even before the Paramount-Nielsen standoff, VideoAmp had reached a new, more lucrative contract with Paramount, according to people familiar with the matter. VideoAmp last year also launched measurement in local markets, which allows it to service Paramount’s owned-and operated local stations in major markets. Now VideoAmp, with a spike in revenue and client requirements, has more than 20 open jobs, about half in engineering.