The Nielsen Corporation, self-referentially known as The Nielsen Company, and formerly known as ACNielsen or AC Nielsen, is a global marketing research firm, with worldwide headquarters in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. Regional headquarters for

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

are located in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

. As of May 2010, it is part of

Nielsen Holdings Nielsen Holdings plc is an American information, data and market measurement firm. Nielsen operates in over 100 countries and employs approximately 44,000 people worldwide. The company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and use ...

. This company was founded in 1923 in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Arthur C. Nielsen Sr. Arthur Charles Nielsen Sr. (September 5, 1897 – June 1, 1980) was an American businessman, electrical engineer and market research analyst who created and tracked the Nielsen ratings for television as founder of the A.C. Nielsen Company. Back ...

in order to give marketers reliable and objective information on the impact of

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

and sales programs. ACNielsen began expanding internationally in 1939, and now operates in more than 100 countries.

Activities

One of Nielsen's best known creations is the

Nielsen ratings Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rat ...

, an audience measurement system that measures television, radio and newspaper audiences in their respective

media market A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...

s. In 1950, they acquired the C. E. Hooper company and began attaching recording devices to a statistical sample of about 1200 consumer television sets in the United States. These devices used photographic film in mail-in cartridges to record the channels viewed by the consumer and thus determine audience size. Later, Nielsen developed electronic methods of data collection and transmission. In 1996, they split off this part of its operations into a separate company called Nielsen Media Research (NMR), which operated as an independent company until it was acquired by Dutch conglomerate VNU in 1999. The company was headquartered in

Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut, outside of Manhattan. It is Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford and New Haven in population as of the 202 ...

before the acquisition by VNU. Another market research tool was the Homescan program where sample members track and report all grocery and retail purchases, allowing purchasing patterns to be related to household demographics. Homescan covers several countries including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2004, ACNielsen chose the CipherLab CPT-8001 as its data collection terminal for the Homescan program throughout

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

International

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, ACNielsen gained reputation for their introduction of the Nielsen areas (or ''Nielsengebiete'' in German), each of which includes one or more German federal states sharing a similar economic structure, culture, and consumer behavior. Marketing strategies in Germany depend considerably on the Nielsengebiete, to the extent that some trademarks or marketing campaigns have only been introduced in some of the Nielsengebiete. In many newspapers and magazines disseminated nationwide, advertisements may be placed for just one or some Nielsengebiete; the circulation figures of print media are often stated according to Nielsengebiete as well.

Mergers and acquisitions

In 2001, ACNielsen itself was acquired by VNU, as part of VNU's Marketing Information group, and thus is now under the same corporate umbrella as the company it spawned, NMR. Nielsen Media Research is based in

, while ACNielsen headquarters remain in Schaumburg, Illinois. ACNielsen is also sister company to Nielsen//NetRatings, which measures Internet and

digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ...

audiences, and Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which measures Consumer-Generated Media. In 2005, ACNielsen initiated their MVP (Media Voice Panel) program. Panel members carry an electronic monitor that detects the digital station and program identification codes hidden within the TV and radio broadcasts they are exposed to. At night, members place the monitor in a cradle that sends the collected data through the home's electrical wiring to a relay device that transmits it by phone, making it one of the first practical uses of electrical wiring as a home network. With an approximately one week notice to members, the MVP program ended on March 17, 2008. In 2007, the owner VNU changed its name to "The Nielsen Company". Arthur Charles Nielsen Jr. (born April 8, 1919) the man who acquired the company from his father, died at the age of 92 on October 3, 2011.

Spinoffs

Nielsen spun off its data and analytics branch ''Global Consumer Business ''as ''NielsenIQ ''in January 2021.

References

External links