'We need to get moving really quickly': comScore's new CEO is racing to turn the company around

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comScore's new CEO Bryan Wiener acknowledged the measurement firm has a tough job ahead of it rebuilding trust in the ad world.
The researcher has been rocked by accounting mishaps over the past few years that created a "two year fog."
Still, Wiener sees a big opportunity to win back advertisers by proving it can track ad campaigns that run across both TV and digital outlets better than others.

Business Insider recently dug in deep on the rocky state of measurement in the TV advertising business. And among the industry's myriad challenges, would-be-contender comScore's outlook was particularly bleak.

One TV executive said even as incumbent Nielsen faced tons of legacy challenges, comScore was basically "nowheresville" when it came to nailing ad measurement in a multiscreen, time-shifted era.

Enter Bryan Wiener.

The ad industry veteran, who helped build the ad agency 360i over a decade ago, was named comScore's CEO earlier this week. An expected choice, Wiener instantly brings the beleaguered metrics firm credibility, but also inherits major problems.

The early reaction to his appointment has been encouraging. Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser called Wiener's appointment a "positive development for comScore and, to the extent that comScore has been restrained in its ability to compete aggressively over the past two years, incrementally negative for Nielsen."

A top TV ad buyer told Business Insider: "I think they do have a shot given access to the set top box data from Rentrak. I would not say Nielsen has blown past them given the challenges we still have in cross screen measurement. I definitely think it's a good opportunity."

Business Insider recently caught up with Wiener to talk about why he decided to grab this role.

Mike Shields: Why did you want to grab this job? People might have seen you running an agency or jumping to a media company.

Bryan Wiener: Well, I don't think of myself as an agency guy. I'm an entrepreneur. We built this company, and 360i started to explode, and then we started to apply that to all kinds of services and it grew. But still it was my first agency job.

My entire career has been about differentiated companies in fast changing industries

Shields: We recently talked to people about comScore, and the hope they had a few years ago when the company acquired Rentrak [which pulls data from cable TV boxes that can be used to target ads]. The feedback wasn't good.

Wiener: We spoke to customers, and partners and investors. And the theme was the same. The marketplace would be better off with a strong comScore. And the market is worried about comScore. That's a fair comment by the way.

Shields: Why are they so worried?

Wiener: Well, it was the result of self-inflicted wounds that put the company in a two year fog. And that led to a lack of innovation. And that depressed morale at the company.

That being said, what comScore is trying to do [tying together digital media and TV measurement for advertisers], the marketplace is moving in that direction. So I think I can go in there, with the skills I have, and the opportunity is tremendous. The good thing is our customers stuck with us. But our customers weren't sure if we were going to be around anymore. So my number one job is to build optimism in the marketplace. The worst is behind us.

Shields: Explain the accounting issues to people who have only partially been paying attention.

Wiener: Basically, the previous management, more than two years ago, they recorded revenue improperly. When that happened, that was a singular event which led to the company getting reaudited, getting delisted, an SEC investigation, activists. It probably cost the company $200 million plus, but it had nothing to do with running the company. It just cost an incredible amount of money and time. And there's a hangover.

Shields: That's going to be a tough job.

Wiener: I didn't need this gig. But I'm fired up. Besides morale, job one is, we have all the assets to build a cross-platform measurement company. Think about what NBCU just did [by announcing a new product designed to measure TV shows on multiple devices using lots of different data sources]. I think it you called them and told them we could offer something like that, they would tell you, 'Please, can you do this?'

People want to measure advertising, and they want to know how many people they reached, and then measure performance. We have the assets to do that. We have to put them together.

Shields: How long is this going to take to get there?

Wiener: We have 90% of what we need. It's about putting it together. If the marketplace doesn't see significant progress in 2018, something's wrong. We need to get moving really quickly. This is about quarters, not years.

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