IRVING, Texas—Amid widespread industry frustration with the state of cross-platform audience measurement, Nexstar Media Group has announced that it is searching for a “next-generation audience partner” and that it has hired a new vice president of measurement innovation to lead the search.
Nexstar said it has issued an open Request for Proposals "seeking a next-generation audience measurement partner capable of providing data that accurately reflects the scale and power of the company’s national and local media businesses."
“Nexstar has an unprecedented collection of media assets, including the largest local broadcast group in the United States, a national cable news network, a free over-the-air television network, and a variety of digital media properties, and we need deeper, richer data about the audiences interacting with them,” said Michael Strober, Nexstar’s chief revenue officer. “We believe current methods of audience measurement inadequately reflect our national reach and the effectiveness of the local activation we deliver to advertisers and marketers. We need to accelerate the pace of innovation in cross-platform measurement not just with national content, but with the content generated in every one of our local markets. We also must ensure that the best data is operational across the company.”
To improve the current systems that inadequately measure cross platform audiences, Nexstar also reported that it recently appointed Hanna Gryncwajg as vice president of measurement innovation to lead this effort and oversee the RFP process.
The company has also been actively engaging with new measurement partners, working earlier this year with VideoAmp and iSpot to deliver linear and streaming audience data generated across its media platforms.
“Our work with several new measurement partners has demonstrated the benefit of fresh thinking and the need for a much more expansive set of measurement capabilities across our entire footprint," said Gryncwajg. "We are looking for innovations and roadmaps that can deliver game-changing improvements to help us maximize the effectiveness of Nexstar’s portfolio for advertisers across the whole funnel – from awareness to conversion and purchase. We need to measure what matters most, and we need to do that across all of our endpoints with speed and precision."
