Nielsen Acquires Artificial Intelligence-Powered Sports Marketing Startup vBrand

Nielsen (NYSE:NLSN) has announced that it has acquired vBrand, a company that has developed a machine learning-enabled platform to measure brand exposure and impact in sports programming.
As quoted in the press release:

vBrand and its technology will be fully integrated into Nielsen Sports, bringing increased delivery speed and scale to the company’s existing flagship sports products, Sport24 and Social24. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The acquisition of vBrand’s advanced technology supercharges Nielsen Sports’ already industry-leading sponsorship measurement capabilities and methodologies, considered among the most robust in sports. vBrand’s machine learning will significantly accelerate the speed at which Nielsen Sports’ logo recognition and media monitoring technologies locate and calculate brand positions on screen. Specifically, the vBrand technology could allow brands and rights holders to monitor and track sponsorship visibility within hours of an event and make adjustments to digital signage and social campaigns within a tournament, competition weekend or season.
Sports marketing is increasingly important for brands looking to reach consumers in a competitive and fragmented marketplace. With fans reliably tuning in to watch their favorite leagues, teams and athletes, global sports and entertainment sponsorship spend is projected to exceed $60 billion in 2017 alone. Nielsen Sports’ flagship marketing solutions already measure millions of hours of content per year, helping to deliver analytics and insights to more than 1,700 of the top rights holders, brands, agencies and broadcasters.

Click here to read the full press release.