Your media analyst at Needham & Company, Laura Martin, Internet and Media, and I'm welcoming to my stage, Jon Carpenter, CEO of Comscore. I'm gonna start with my professional question. I guess it's really a personal question, but it's in a professional framework, which is: what is the most impactful professional conversation you've ever had, and how did it change your path?
Hmm. I don't know that I could boil it down to one specific conversation. I would say I was really lucky early in my career to have gone through General Electric's leadership programs. And I think what I learned very early on from the leaders that I worked for are really three things, probably, that I share with especially young professionals that are coming up is, one, just be someone who gets stuff done. I think it sounds really simple, but if you demonstrate a level of intellectual curiosity to solve problems rather than just highlight them and actually be somebody to go to to get the work done, that work by leaders in that organization will absolutely get noticed.
So just getting stuff done and being, it sounds super simple, is one. Two, I think, I learned early on to take the jobs that nobody wants.
I remember you said that last time. Six months ago, you said that.
There's a lot to be said in terms of the resilience that you get from experiences that are tough, that people shy away from. You know, I've certainly had plenty of that in my career, and I think that's benefited me tremendously in terms of how I think about problems, how I think about how to approach certain things. So take the jobs that nobody wants or the tough jobs, and you'll find that hard work certainly will pay off. And then lastly, hire people that are smarter than you. Don't be afraid to hire people that have got a skill set that's different than yours. And then not just hire them, but then empower them to make decisions. Don't tell them what to do, empower them to make decisions.
You know, I've kind of always subscribed to the fact that you don't hire smart people and tell them what to do. You hire smart people to make you personally and professionally better as an organization. Those are probably three things that I learned early on in my career that I've kinda taken along the ride with me.
So, you know, one of my theories about, you know, why women don't progress as much as men do is 'cause men take bigger risks, and this notion that you're gonna take jobs other people want, want, by definition, means you're taking risks that other people weren't willing to take, that you really could fail, otherwise somebody else would have taken the job. So do you think of yourself as a risk taker in an organizational point of view?
I don't know that I would consider myself a risk taker. I think, you know, I benefited from being in uncomfortable situations. You know, making yourself uncomfortable, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, being comfortable with not knowing all the answers out of the gate up front. And the more that you do that, the more you learn, the more that you grow. You know, success doesn't come, you know, success comes from failure a lot of time and learning from those and figuring out how to grow and pick yourself up off the floor.
So I don't know that that necessarily makes me a risk taker. I think we tend to look at our problems through a practical lens and try and approach them in a very thoughtful way as we, you know, as we're certainly thinking about with Comscore and what we're trying to do. You know, I think I've found, like, we're not swinging for the fence on all the things that we're trying for, right?
Get men on base, get a lead-off walk, and good things start to happen, and, you know, that's, that's the way we've kind of approached things around our organization. We, we live in a, in a world, business, personally, where you want instant gratification.
Mm-hmm.
You show up to the gym on the first day, and you expect to see the results. You realize success takes time, it takes discipline, it takes putting in the hard work. And I think if you approach most things with that mentality, over time, good things, good things happen.
Okay. All right, so you're turning the ship around at Comscore. Comscore is a great example of you've taken a job no one wanted.
I don't know about that.
You're the sixth CEO in my tenure that's taken the job that no one wanted, so here you are. But anyway, you're turning the ship. Can you talk about products you're most optimistic about, and what you think are the key revenue growth drivers for 2024 and 2025?
I think, look. I think running this company is a privilege, and I'm incredibly grateful to the board, to our shareholders, to our employees who have given me this opportunity day in and day out. What we're focused on, I think, is what we believe is where the puck is going for this industry, and that is very much omni-channel. It is cross-platform, and if you look at the products that we're investing heavily in, if you look at where our resources and capital allocation is going, across this organization, it is to our cross-platform products. And right now, that is a suite of products that include Proximic by Comscore, which is our cross-platform audience activation.
It's both ID and ID-free audience activation capabilities that are cross-platform. And then, of course, our cross-platform ad measurement product, CCR. That today makes up our suite of cross-platform offerings, and that's where we're seeing really robust and attractive growth. And of course, that product suite doesn't come to existence if not for Comscore's rich heritage in, you know, traditional television and of course, our traditional digital audience measurement. Those two world-class products are what really anchor our cross-platform capability today, and it's why we're having, you know, I believe, the success that we're having with them.
So both of those are video products, right? Right, 'cause when you say cross-platform, they're both video.
Video.
It's basically linear to CTV.
Video, but it, you know, on the digital side, we're also measuring, you know, we've got display capability, so it's, but primarily video.
Okay, so the future for Comscore is video?
It's about helping our audiences leverage the holistic media plan to surface their audiences, in ways that help drive true incrementality, on behalf of the advertiser and on behalf of the publisher. And the focus is absolutely video. It's where the base dollars are.
Okay. So those are the two products that are gonna drive growth in 2024 and 2025?
And beyond, yeah.
And beyond.
For sure.
Okay, great. In January, when you were on my stage, you said that the balance sheet was a high priority. Can you give us an update?
Oof! I wish, you know, we could say we've made more progress than we have.
Okay
In full transparency, I think, you know, we hear directly from, you know, common shareholders who, you know, remain interested in the work that we're doing, certainly see the vision and the strategy of what we're putting forth. And that has landed with many of our, our shareholders. But what ultimately ends up coming, you know, almost full upfront is the capital structure. And, you know, while we've made some progress, we've not made as much as I would've hoped here, almost five months into the year, in terms of making that a simpler story for common shareholders to understand.
So we've got work left to do, and it remains a very high priority for myself, and you know, our board of directors recognize it as well, and it's just a matter of figuring out what the right outcome is that benefits, you know, all shareholders here.
Okay. So Walmart Vizio has come up in every meeting. Here's how I'm gonna frame that question to you.
Mm.
For the last five years, Vizio has been selling its ACR data to new competitors, to Nielsen as a backbone of new measurement products for connected television. You guys already had an entrenched. You buy Vizio content, I know that, but my opinion is that Walmart will shut that down because it has privacy risks from the EU or from America. So I think Walmart doesn't want the headache. They will shut that down. My question is: Is that a benefit to you because of all the other sources of measurement material, and does that take away some of your competitors, if in fact, Walmart shuts down the Vizio.
What did Vizio say about that?
They aren't allowed to say, because they, that is a Walmart question. Walmart has the right to make that answer, right?
Mm-hmm.
That they wouldn't renew contracts when they come up.
Mm.
Vizio doesn't have a point of view on what Walmart's gonna do about that.
Well, we have a long-standing partnership with Vizio that we're very proud of. It is an important piece, but it's one of many pieces in terms of our cross-platform offering. Our contract is with Vizio, and we feel like we've got a really good standing in terms of what that contract looks like. It's multiyear in nature, and they've been nothing but a great partner to us, and we fully expect that that is going to continue. And I don't wanna speculate what Walmart's intentions are here, but I would say we're extremely confident in the contract that we have with Vizio, and fully expect them to see it through the term.
Okay. Assume it doesn't get renewed. That's my assumption, that Walmart won't renew any of them. Where does that leave you? I assume it's bad for you, but is it as bad as for everybody else?
I don't know about everybody else, and how they've integrated that product into their offering, but I can say, it's one of many. When you think about Comscore and our offering, it includes, on the digital side, many direct integrations with streaming platforms. It includes the tens of thousands of publisher integrations that we have globally. It is our digital panel and our total home panel, and then on the traditional TV side, it is virtually every MVPD player in the space, every satellite player virtually in the space, coupled with other data sources that we bring in, in addition to Vizio. So if Vizio were to not renew, you know, that would be not.
That's certainly not my best-case scenario, but I would say it would be manageable, given the other aspects.
They wouldn't renew anybody. In my scenario, they don't renew anybody, so you're not at a competitive disadvantage.
Look, the other advantage that we have here, and I think you saw that play out in terms of the progress that this team has made, is we are the only big data TV audience measurement product that's MRC-accredited and JIC-certified in this ecosystem. And that, what my point is, one, that's a really big deal, but two, we've been at this game for almost 25 years now in terms of our ability to integrate big data, leverage the incredible data scientists and researchers that we have and staff that know how to handle this. We're ingesting new datasets all the time. We're replacing new datasets all the time.
And so if one or another were to come out, it's not anything that would be unusual for us in terms of how we manage our offering.
What's the latency of measurement down to? I know you have these different tiers. It used to be two weeks, and then you got it shorter. What, what are the different products' latency in terms of getting measurement results to your clients?
So on the traditional TV audience measurement product, we can post out with 95% accuracy within 48 hours across all 210 markets and nationally, which no one comes close to.
That's amazing.
The speed with which we can turn around traditional TV viewership data. On the digital side, it's our traditional digital product right now is essentially a day. It's down from what was multiple weeks, and so that's a major improvement that the team has made. And so when you start talking about cross-platform and what that means for our capability for an advertiser who not only wants to not only wants to advertise nationally, but help them advertise nationally and optimize down to local levels, the speed with which our data gets filtered back to them is an incredible advantage. You know, Burger King's a great example.
They advertise nationally, but for Burger King to know where they underperformed or overperformed in any given market where they have a store or down to a zip code level, is highly valuable for them, for us to be able to say: "Look, here's your national campaign. You may have met your GRPs, you may have met the audience that you wanted to reach, but in these 15 markets where you are, here's how you over or underperformed the average GRP performance." And that's the power of the scale that Comscore has. Then you layer in our digital data, and now you can start to have a conversation with, "Well, let us help you optimize your in-flight digital campaigns against what's in flight on the linear side, and help you optimize that real time.
Oh, by the way, against segments that we can provide for you in terms of your target, target audience.
How long is a typical ad campaign? Like, if you're giving them feedback within 48 hours, let's say, how long is a typical ad campaign?
It varies. I mean, some of them are days, some of them are weeks. In the case of the Super Bowl, it's, you know, maybe a couple of weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. In some cases, a campaign may be live for a month.
Okay.
6 weeks.
The 48 hours is helpful as long as it's not a four day campaign. But most of the guys don't do four day campaigns, right?
No. I mean, you obviously get some of it. But no, the vast majority of it is, how can you help me plan and put my campaign in flight, leveraging my ability to reach audiences where they are, and then measure them? And make measurement not this reactive after my campaign ran.
Right
Tell me how I did. Help me optimize that in flight, and help me optimize my non-linear campaign against the stuff that I have in flight on the linear side, so I can adjust in real time. Now, we're slowly kind of getting to that point, but that's where the puck is going, and that's the power of our cross-platform capability that we're able to deliver for our audience, for our clients.
Let's talk about where the puck is going, 'cause one of the things I see going on real time in CTV is this drive to bottom-of-funnel, to drive to purchase. Being really brought on by Amazon's decision on January 24th to turn all of its 200 million Prime Video subscribers into ad-driven subscribers, and then Walmart's decision to buy Vizio to sort of, if you wanna answer the Amazon threats.
Mm-hmm
So I actually see connected television leaving top-of-funnel and pulling downstream into the purchase, tying the ad to an actual purchase. Return on capital, isn't that bad for the measurement business? 'Cause measurement is a proxy, right? You reach this much, and therefore, we'll assume it's a 10% buy rate, but there's no actual feedback loop. It's just an assumption. And if we actually are gonna get actual CTV ads tied to purchases, doesn't that devalue the top-of-funnel connected television or cross-platform advertising product?
Well, I would agree that no doubt media is becoming more performant. I think I would start at. Let's just start at top of funnel for a sec.
Okay.
I mean, the first outcome that matters in your media plan is, did I reach the right audience with the right frequency, right? Let's start there. Did I optimize my reach and frequency effectively, and who's the measurement provider that's best suited to make sure that that happens? Well, once you've got the capability, which we do, to ensure that the incrementality is there, that the true deduplicated nature of that reach and frequency is accurate, well, now I can layer on all kinds of research and insight solutions that I can provide, that help kind of full funnel attribution and outcome-based measurement ladder off of a true, you know, measurement player, that gave you confidence in the first place that your reach and frequency was accurate.
So we believe we're incredibly well-positioned as the market moves more performative. You know, we view, look , retail media networks, still highly fragmented.
That's true.
And so the role that measurement plays in bringing clarity to that, bringing clarity to how is retail media network working inside my whole plan, my whole media plan, I think is something that we bring to the table that is much needed for an industry that's still grappling with, you know, where's all this ad load that's going, that's coming, that's moving away from linear? Where is it showing up? How much of it's showing up on CTV? How much of it's showing up in retail media? How much is showing up in gaming? How do you help me reach my audiences and tell me whether or not that was true incrementality, whether or not it drove the outcome that I needed? And that's where we come in.
And you've lost me. No, I'm confused. So we have this top of funnel. My argument, which may be invalid, is that, like, they're taking 10% of that and putting it bottom of funnel. Then the CFO sees that that works, 'cause there's a piece in CTV, and it's going directly to purchase, so the CFO sees it in the quarter, and when the guy comes back and says: "I wanna take another 10% and put it down there," he says, "Yes," because there's a clear. So I don't understand where Comscore is more helpful.
Yeah, if that's where. Look, if you're an advertiser and you're only placing your media inside a particular realm, retail media network, and that's the only place it's sitting, and you can directly, sure, maybe we're not adding a lot of value in that scenario, but more often than not.
Yeah.
Your campaigns are running across platform, and how do you know the price point at which you should be paying for a piece of inventory that's staying here, versus on CTV, versus in another channel? And that's where, that's where the power of our data helps our, helps our clients plan more effectively with confidence, with all this cross-channel consumption that's taking place.
And does it show up as?
And by the way, that's not just for everybody. Like, if you're Ford right? You don't care about, like, you're not, like, that consideration set is much longer than if you're a CPG brand showing up.
Toothpaste.
Toothpaste.
Yeah.
Not everything, you know, while retail media is an important part of the equation here, there are many advertisers where the consideration set is much longer.
Okay.
How do you find the right balance there, in terms of how your media gets placed across all these channels?
One of the things that came up earlier was that we had a, we had a panel that just said: "What are the biggest digital issues?" One of them was the complexity. The complexity is just exploding as we get fragmented audiences. Is Comscore a solution for that complexity? Does it simplify or standardize the measurement? Is that one of the big positive benefits?
We believe we bring a level of standardization across all this, in terms of how we measure impressions across all of these platforms.
Would you agree that complexity is one of, like, the three biggest problems with digital advertising?
Yes. I mean, yeah, 100%. I don't know that I could. I don't know that I could argue that it's not complex. The thing that's making it more, you know, more complex when you think about it, is just linear is still the most effective reach vehicle, and the ad load that exists on linear is so much greater than connected TV.
That's true.
As linear falls, in terms of the amount of time and attention it commands, and shifts towards digital platforms, how do you replace that ad load scale that you were getting through the efficiency of linear? How do you, how do you know how much connected TV you should be buying? How do you know how much digital video you should be buying? How much short-form video you should be buying? And I think what we're able to do with our suite of assets is bring, bring that to light, in terms of where those audiences are.
Help answer those questions.
Help help answer those questions.
Okay.
Yeah.
Do you feel that your, the clients that you call on or that you service, view TikTok and YouTube user-generated content as a substitute, or equally to, to CTV, which I think of as premium content, top and bottom of funnel?
Yes, probably, but I don't know that that's Comscore's place to arbitrate what's premium versus.
But you see them spending money across the funnel.
I see.
When you think across the funnel, you put user-generated content into that.
You usually, you look, yeah, one.
'Cause of reach, 'cause reach.
100%.
Okay. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. That was a big argument earlier today about, you know, what's TV and what kind of content is TV? And I think there's, there's, I think, reasonable men may differ, and I think there's quite strongly held opinions on both sides of that.
For sure.
Interesting. Okay, let's talk about Upfronts. So we're in the middle of Upfront week.
Mm.
You know, Disney's right now. Yesterday was NBC and Fox. Tomorrow is, I guess, Warner Bros. Discovery. What will the content this year in the Upfronts, what's Comscore gonna be used at by the Upfront guys? What's Nielsen? And then, you know, VideoAmp was on my stage earlier, and they said they're gonna get a bunch of currency contracts.
Mm.
Like NBC came to mind. Tell me what you think, as the Upfronts unfold, number of currencies that will get used for the Upfronts?
I think you'll see, Well, I mean, let's be honest, to the extent that there's still Upfronts transacted largely on broad-based demos, I mean, that's historically been Nielsen' strong suit. I don't know that that necessarily changes. I don't know that for Comscore that necessarily matters.
Mm-hmm.
Broad-based demos is a, you know, is a, is a big portion of the upfront market. It's a big portion of the.
The reach, the reach portion.
However, that's shifting dramatically to audience-based buying, and that's where.
So wait, so stay with it. Is that true?
It's certainly. I don't know if this is. I would say the vast, vast majority is still demo-based, in terms of the Upfronts.
I would call it content-based.
Yeah.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah, yes, content-based, but in terms of, like, what the guarantee is based off of, you know.
Right
You know.
Okay
Traditional demos, that’s Nielsen's game. But I think I'll point to a Digiday article that just came out yesterday, where they surveyed all, you know, major advertisers and agencies on who they were leveraging in the Upfronts as their currency of choice.
Yeah.
No surprise, it was Nielsen at about 50%.
Okay.
I think, roughly. Comscore, number two at roughly 46-47%.
Okay.
And then a very, very distant, like it wasn't even close, everybody else. You throw Oracle.
Okay
Moat, iSpot, VideoAmp into that mix.
Interesting.
So what you see here is a very clear delineation between who the clients that sit on the buy and sell side of the equation are looking to when it comes to trusting an outcome based, where they're putting billions of dollars of advertising, hundreds of billions of dollars of advertising, to work. It's, you know, no surprise, Nielsen, but it's us in terms of a very, very close second.
Is the local, national Nielsen?
No, there was an Upfront-based. Who are you using in the Upfronts?
The local broadcasters?
No.
In the Upfronts?
No. TV upfront.
Oh, that surprises me. I'm surprised you're almost equal to Nielsen in the upfronts.
Well, look, I mean, we're, we've, we've been at this for, like I said, almost 25 years. We are the only MRC-accredited TV measurement product for both local and national. We are the first big data TV audience measurement company to be certified for TV audience measurement by the MRC. We were one of two to be certified by the U.S. JIC as a cross-platform transactable currency. And so to me, it's not a surprise. We put in the hard work to get our product to a place that is reliable, stable, and cross-platform. And that's what clients want, and that's what they're looking for. And so, you know, we feel like we've, we've you know, we've got work to do, but our product positioning is very focused on serving the cross-platform needs of this marketplace.
But I have a question, 'cause Nielsen doesn't have a lot of those certifications, and yet they have 51% of the market. So it must not be that. And they charge 10x as much as you. So it must not be that the certifications matter. They don't matter as much as you would think they would matter, I guess.
No, I disagree with that because there's, I mean, one, there's a massive difference between Comscore and Nielsen from everybody else who doesn't have those, in terms of the use case. I think you look at the relative size of the businesses.
Okay.
In terms of command of client dollars, there's massive differences between where Comscore, Nielsen sit versus everybody else.
Okay
In terms of where the dollars are going. And I think what the MRC provides back to the marketplace is a true understanding of a service that, you know, stood up, was, you know, stood up to the rigors of an MRC audit. It can be trusted. It's reliable. We do what we say we're doing. And I think it's massively important for the industry to have a body like the MRC in the middle kind of saying, "Hey, well, who's credible here from a currency standpoint, when we're talking about, you know, billions and billions of dollars of advertising changing hands?
But the value of being a currency is that you have pricing power. And have you been able to close the price gap at all to Nielsen?
I think the days of, you know, Nielsen-style contracts are probably behind us, the historical days of.
You or them?
Are behind them.
Yeah, okay.
In terms of, we see this moving in a very different direction. As audiences become more fragmented, audiences become more digital, you know, digital is largely programmatic. That's where our focus is. And in that environment, you're talking about transacting on a percent of the ad spend, not a fixed-fee model.
That's true.
And so I think the economics are incredibly attractive, but the model's different, right? I'm not going in with a fixed fee.
At $100 million a year
Contract.
Yeah.
I'm going in with a model that is very much tied to the ad spend.
Rev share. Like a rev share model.
It's programmatic. I'm built for the programmatic environment. My big data, it's inherently built for programmatic. The deal that we announced with The Trade Desk earlier in this quarter is exactly unlocking what I just said. It is our cross-platform capability, tied to our cross-platform audience activation business, enabled inside the Trade Desk.
Okay, so let's do that slower. That product that you announced with Trade Desk is a rev share product?
Local cross-platform product.
Local cross-platform. A local cross-platform, I'm trying to think what that means. A local station like ABC.
No.
No, sorry, what?
That is your brand who and simple, a couple things. You're a brand who is targeting audiences through spending media on linear and digital channels.
Okay.
Through programmatic pipes that we've got set up now with Trade Desk and others, you can basically leverage Comscore's audience segments.
Okay
And Comscore's cross-platform measurement to help you optimize your digital spend through The Trade Desk against in-flight linear campaigns.
Okay.
In almost near real time, right? We, again, we turn around linear data in two days in every single market. So if you're, again, I go back to my Burger King example. Advertising nationally, you wanna optimize locally, and you wanna optimize your digital spend, you would leverage the Comscore local cross-platform capability inside that environment.
Okay, local meaning the Burger King, like by region. Like, right, that's what you're saying?
Yeah, 100%. So down to a zip code level.
Okay. Okay.
Or connected TV piped directly into the household.
But is that a currency in that respect? That's not a currency, right?
Sure, yes, it's a currency.
It's a measurement.
It's a currency, it's a measurement. You know, people like to talk about currency in the traditional sense.
The guarantee.
Like, we don't exist.
You talk about scatter.
Yeah, we don't exist only in the context of a transaction, right? That's a, that's a specific market here. Like, right, the currency is, can I use Comscore to effectively score, you know, the audiences that we're guaranteed for a particular campaign?
Sure.
You 100% can. But if that's the only value proposition that we're giving back to our clients, like, that's, that's only one component of what we do. We then, like, we exist regardless of who your currency of choice is, right? We live in a multi-currency world.
Okay.
And so if you're using, you know, you know, the incumbent currency to score your GRPs, we'll demonstrate to you how those GRPs play out in every specific local markets that matters to you and show you where incrementality was won or lost.
Okay, right. So you're not getting de-duplicated. You're actually getting frequency helping with frequency capping.
Right, exactly.
So that you know that you're reaching every local market and not three markets 100 x.
100%.
Right, okay. Are we gonna be able to fix frequency capping, or is it just a by-product of targeting? That when they target me, I'm just gonna get too many of the same ads, and I'm not gonna see any ads that you see ever.
Well, the beauty of what we provide is we provide truly a de-duplicated reach of audience. Now, part of the problem with measurement today outside of Comscore is that there is no way to kind of, you know, the businesses haven't done a good job of de-duplicated audience. We have, you know, tested methodologies around how we de-duplicate audiences across platforms.
Mm-hmm.
So we, you know, that reach and frequency that you're getting back from Comscore is highly, highly reliable. And oh, by the way, we've got segments that are cross-platform, audience segments that are, have both ID-based and ID-free based contextual signals that, you can activate against, that have, and have a high degree of confidence in, that is tied directly to the methodology that we built on the measurement side, to demonstrate the true incrementality of, what's taking place.
Okay. Questions from the audience? Any questions for Jon at Comscore? Okay. All right, well keep going. So, when you think of the revenue streams, do you have a strategic goal around currency, like we wanna be so much currency? Or do you just have, like, revenue goals, and you sort of don't really care about the products that are coming from it?
Well, I think we have. You know, we obviously think about currency. I would say being a currency-grade measurement product gives us a lot of credibility in terms of all the other solutions that we bring to the marketplace. And so what was. You know, we're again, we've got currency-grade TV audience measurement solutions that are MRC accredited. That MRC-accredited TV product is the foundation, along with our digital product, to our cross-platform offering. And so currency is a big part of the talk track and a big part of who we are, and many of our clients use us as a currency to the tune of billions of dollars of advertising that's transacted on a Comscore currency. But that's not our only reason for existence, right?
We provide value back to our clients because we have a social view of audiences, a connected TV view of audiences, a traditional digital view of audiences, a traditional view of audiences that can be put together in a way that helps you effectively meet your plans and outcomes that you're trying to achieve.
Okay. My favorite business that you run is the movie business, which is a monopoly business.
It is a great business.
It's a great business. It's really small, I get it, but I really love that business. So can you talk about what's happening in the movie business? Is M&A coming back? Are we getting more releases?
Hmm.
Are you getting? I know the custom work has really fallen off. Are you seeing any resurgence on that?
The movies business has been very resilient. You know, we've got a really strong market-leading position in terms of the box office data that we collect globally. We collect roughly 95% of global box office receipts.
Without ex-China, though, right? You got rid of China.
Oh, China, we get through, we've got a third-party relationship that helps us with China, so that we've got accuracy in that marketplace. And long-standing, sticky relationships with all the major studios. The theatrical business last year was really healthy, right? It did over in the U.S., or North America, it did over $9 billion in North American box office. The global box office was, you know, $35 billion or so. Not quite back to pre-pandemic levels, but up considerably from where we were in 2021. I think when we look at the marketplace in 2024, I think we're somewhat conservative in terms of what we think the box office will be.
What do you think?
You know.
More than nine?
North of eight, probably less than nine. But you had some really big, you know, it's hard to, you’re comping Barbie and Oppenheimer, and it's hard to kinda predict, but the slate over the summer is rich with some really good titles. And so we're optimistic on our position in that space. It's a marketplace that's, you know, globally growing, you know, low single digits, and we track to that. So it's not a high-growth business, but it is a lucrative business. It is very sticky, and it fits very well into our cross-platform capability that we can provide to clients, given our ability to see box office data, marry that with streaming data, and the rest of our digital and TV data. So we like that business a lot in terms of what it has to offer for cross-platform holistically.
Well, speaking of the balance sheet, which we spoke about, what, what about the idea of selling off movies, which is separable from everything else in the empire, and just taking the cash and paying down debt with that to solve your balance sheet issue?
You know, it's a question we get asked a lot. I think what it comes down to is we really like that business a lot. And we know how to run it. We feel like it adds tremendous value to the rest of the portfolio, and so, you know, we've decided not to sell that asset. But we're a public company. Everything, you know, everything has a price, but we love that, you know, asset in terms of our position in it. So it'd be hard to move on from that.
Okay. Any questions from the audience? Okay, so my last one is: sitting here a year from now, Jon, what are we gonna be talking about that we didn't touch on today? Like, what is Wall Street missing that's an issue that you see sort of bubbling up and you're gonna be thinking about, or the industry's gonna be thinking about? Whether it could be cookie deprecation or, you know, what do you think is an issue that Wall Street should be more focused on?
As it relates to measurement or Comscore specifically?
I was more thinking like digital advertising, like, something like really substantive that we're missing in the digital advertising ecosystem. You might have a perspective coming from measurement to answer that, but you guys in the operating businesses see so much more than us, that we just really miss some of these big issues sometimes that are value destructive or value creative.
Yeah, I think as it relates to measurement specifically, I anticipate you'll see some of the noise dissipate.
Okay
And you know, really collate around products, like our cross-platform capability, as true market differentiators, given how omni-channel the media environment is. And so I think that sets us apart. You know, for us specifically, we've got some pretty specific goals that we know we need to hit.
Can you share those?
Our shareholders wanna see robust revenue growth.
Yep.
And I think, you know, recognize that we do serve, you know, difficult end markets in parts of our legacy business. But I think what we're highlighting here going forward is omni-channel, where the puck is going, programmatic. Linear, still important, but part of a much bigger omni-channel picture of what we deliver from a management measurement standpoint. And the growth of that product suite, a year from now, versus where we are today, is gonna look really attractive.
Okay. All right. Anything else before I call time?