Rentrak CEO on Main Competition Nielsen’s Blunder: ‘Nobody Sets Out to Make a Mistake’

Still, Bill Livek thinks his company does several things better than the traditional TV ratings juggernaut

Bill Livek Rentrak
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Rentrak CEO Bill Livek can empathize with fellow ratings company Nielsen about its now-well-known technical gaffe that led to misreported data since March — but he also believes that his company can provide certain services better.

“There are a bunch of bright people at Nielsen and we’ve got a bunch of bright people at Rentrak,” Livek told TheWrap. “People show up everyday trying to do their best, nobody sets out to make a mistake.”

That said, on his “bright people,” Livek elaborated: “We know what we are and we know that our customers love what we do.”

Also read: ABC Likely to Be Most Affected by Nielsen Screw-Up, Insiders Say

However, not everybody knows exactly what Rentrak is or what they do. Rentrak has hundreds of clients within the video-on-demand arm of its business, where the company uses a census-based system to measure more than 114 million TV sets. On the more traditional television side of things, Rentrak tracks 60 million TV sets, projecting those numbers to the entire population.

Then, Rentrak merges demographically the products that consumers own and buy against the precise TV shows they watch.

So the company is kind of like Nielsen, but kind of not. Like Nielsen, Rentrak does business with all of the major networks and their subsidiary stations, though more so on the VOD side. Unlike Nielsen, Rentrak is not working with every network on the live, over-the-air television end. At least, for now.

Also read: Nielsen Admits ‘Technical’ Screwup Has Impacted Network TV Ratings Since March

But while the company would love Nielsen’s market share, Rentrak prefers what Livek calls its own “advanced demographics” methodology, which for television has been a real boon to the No. 2 player.

“As a company, we’re growing about 40 percent a year and our television business is growing about 80 percent a year,” Livek told us. “Part of that comes from new clients, part of that comes from pricing increases.”

However the dollars come in, 80 percent of Rentrak’s revenue comes from television-related products.

Also read: NBC’s Research Prez Reveals New 52-Week Strategy: Original Fall Season Is a ‘Nielsen Artifact’

On Friday, Nielsen revealed that it erroneously reported a small percentage of broadcast network TV ratings dating back to March. The company actually didn’t uncover the mistake itself: CBS asked Nielsen to double check its numbers when the most-watched network noticed unusually large jumpa from fast national numbers to Live + Same Day final ratings — but only for ABC.

Corrected ratings for the fall shows will be recalculated and distributed, though some networks, such as NBC, want Nielsen to re-release more accurate numbers dating back to March 2, when the software bug occurred. The bug has since been identified and rectified.

As TheWrap reported earlier on Friday, some ABC numbers are likely to tick down slightly in the amended numbers, while the other broadcast nets will stay stagnant or tick up just a touch. The effect is not anticipated to change any rankings of shows or networks at this point.

Also read: Rentrak Snaps Up Nielsen EDI

With that mess-up in mind, Livek is happy to share his Rentrak’s successes. When asked what his company does better than the big boys, Livek chose his words very carefully. “We’re a technology company, we are an information company and we are a research company,” he said.

While he believes his company is more adaptive to the current market — one of the knocks on Nielsen is how slow they’ve been to adapt to multiplatform viewing — Livek believes there is room for both companies. And for now, he’s happy to use Nielsen numbers as a jumping-off point for his own product.

Livek said that switching from Nielsen to Rentrak numbers for advertisers is just as easy as using an exchange rate for purchases when traveling: “We believe we live in a market where there are two currencies,” he said.

Also read: Fox TV Stations to Get Local Market Ratings From Rentrak

Livek is not the only one excited about the existence of that second currency. Earlier on Friday, a network TV insider told TheWrap that they hope the Nielsen flub puts some wind in the sails of Rentrak, galvanizing the company into providing the industry with a true alternative in understanding the demographics of their consumers.

In a later conversation, CBS’s David Poltrack also praised the lack of a monopoly in measuring TV ratings, which is what the networks sell their advertisements based on.

“The idea that there is competition in the marketplace is very healthy,” Poltrack said.

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