Raphael Bohne
Research expert covering professional services
Nielsen Holdings - statistics & facts
Headquartered in New York City, Nielsen Holdings is a global market research company with operations in over 100 countries. The company specializes in measurement and data analytics across the media, advertising, retail, and consumer goods industries. The total revenue accumulated by Nielsen in 2021 amounted to 3.5 billion U.S dollars, and when broken down by region more than half of this was generated in the United States. This made Nielsen the fifth largest market research company worldwide and the second leading market research company in the United States. A global competitor of the company that is also based in the United States is Gartner Inc., who reported almost 4.75 billion U.S. dollars in global revenue for 2021. IQVIA, who had the highest global revenue worldwide in 2021, ranked below Nielsen in the leading market research companies in the United States, however still accrued a significant research revenue in the North American country.
Nielsen is a household name in the U.S. market
In 1984, the company was purchased by the Dun & Bradstreet Company, who ten years later separated out the company’s television ratings services into a new company, Nielsen Media Research. This company was then acquired by Dutch publishing company VNU in 1999. In 2001, VNU also acquired the remainder of the AC Nielsen Company, and recombined the businesses. Following a series of restructures, divestments, and a change of ownership, VNU was renamed as The Nielsen Company in 2006, and operated as a private company until listing itself on the New York Stock exchange in 2011. Contributing to its established reputation, Nielsen boasted a workforce of about 6,200 full-time employees in the United States in 2021. The number of full-time employees at Kantar, another U.S. based competitor, was less than half of that in the same year.Decreasing cost of revenue
Since 2015, Nielsen Holdings have decreased their cost of revenue significantly. This has indicated that, along with a decreasing number of employees, that the company have cut back on the total cost of delivering their services to consumers. When coupled with the decreasing assets of Nielsen Holdings, this has perhaps signified a company that is trying to balance its books following the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.
