The Business Of Data With Jon Lafayette: Deals, Data and Donna. Oh My
Even in this holiday season, the deal-making won't stop. Streaming continues its takeover of TV as Netflix gets closer to devouring Warner Bros and YouTube gets set to stream the Oscars. (It feels like going to the movies is going to feel more retro and unusual in the not too distant future.) Meanwhile, NBCU is previewing its data-based CES presentation and Donna Speciale is back, helping startup Audyns sell data-driven linear ad campaigns. Before I lose my breath, here's wishing all a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and a more prosperous 2026.
XR Makes Deal with Nielsen to Build Measurement Into Campaign Assets
'Solutions like these help us improve the overall ad ecosystem as well as make us better business partners to our clients,' said Nielsen's Nichole Henderson
With ads running on more platforms and appearing on more screens, keeping track of them has become a more complex task.
XR, which helps brands manage their advertising creative assets, has made a deal with Nielsen that will make it easier to measure how many people see them.
Brands who use XR’s platform can select Nielsen as their measurement provider and have Nielsen One ad tags automatically attached to ads or campaigns served by XR–formerly known as Extreme Reach. [READ MORE]
NBCU Putting More Data at Clients' Fingertips With Performance Insights Hub
NBCUniversal plans to offer more advertisers more measurement and better measurement of how campaigns perform. In a preview of that they’ll be showing off next month during the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NBCU also said it is offering new ad formats and making more of them available to any programmatic buyer with a laptop.
Used to be, there was nothing more powerful than TV advertising. And the only data people who sold it had to worry about were their bar tab and their golf score.
Then digital technology came and changed everything. Not all of the changes were good. And it was really bad for legacy media. Those digital guys had all kinds of data that allegedly proved online advertising worked. There were page views, click rates and other metrics, but it turned out even when they were accurate, they barely correlated to sales and profits. All the TV networks had was Nielsen. [READ MORE]
A Speciale Role at Data-Driven Start-Up Audyns
Advertising industry legend Donna Speciale, an early advocate of audience-based targeting, has been named a senior advisor to Audyns, a startup using agentic-AI to build driven linear campaigns.
Audyns was launched in May by former ad sales veterans Michael Strober, Dan Aversano and long-time agency media buyer Todd Gordon.
Strober and Aversan0 worked with Speciale when she was head of advertising sales at Turner Broadcasting. And when she left her most recent post as president of advertising sales and marketing at TelevisaUnivision, Strober told The Measure he called to recruit her. [READ MORE]
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