Roku Acquires Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Business

Roku Inc (NASDAQ: ROKU) has inked an agreement to acquire Nielsen Holdings PLC’s (NYSE: NLSN) Advanced Video Advertising (AVA) business, including Nielsen’s video automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies.
The acquisition will fast-track Roku’s launch of an end-to-end DAI solution with TV programmers.
Additionally, Nielsen and Roku will form a strategic partnership to complement Nielsen ad and content measurement products into the Roku platform and develop Nielsen’s cross-media measurement solution Nielsen ONE.
Roku said the announcement builds on multiple years of a close association between Roku and Nielsen. The companies will form a long-term agreement to leverage Total Ad Ratings (TAR) on the Roku platform. Precisely, Roku’s media sales and ad-buying platform, OneView, will natively fit in Nielsen’s “always-on” Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) for advertisers. Roku will also support Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR) by publishers.
The partnership will help extend the footprint of smart TVs and other devices, where Nielsen would enable media sellers and buyers to appraise and monetize addressable advertising.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Price action: ROKU shares are down 1.82% at $412.65, and NLSN shares are trading higher by 3.95% at $24.05 on the last check Tuesday.