Advertising news today: Comscore and Nielsen leadership, holiday shopping stats

NBC’s “This Is
Us”
NBC

The media measurement giants Nielsen and Comscore have hired big
shots from the digital agency and marketing worlds to help them
restore the business’ credibility and solve the
messy TV measurement problem.

Nielsen just hired ex-IBM exec David Kenny, who succeeded Mitch
Barns, a 20-year vet of Nielsen. And in April, Comscore named
360i chairman Bryan Wiener to be its chief executive, succeeding
its cofounder Gian Fulgoni.

Ad buyers and sellers expressed hope to Business Insider that, as
experienced digital practitioners, Kenny and Wiener would speak
their language and bring a more customer-centric culture to
companies that historically have been research-driven. Agencies
in particular hope they’ll get more of a hearing with the
measurement companies who make more of their money from media
sellers than agencies.

Click here to read more about how
measurement companies are shaking up their leadership teams.

In other news:

New York Media built vertical brands to survive in
digital media, and now it needs to tear them down to push into
subscriptions. New York Media is rolling out a new
subscription program while redesigning its website to bring all
of its properties together.

Facebook is expanding its local news feature ‘Today In’
to more than 400 US cities.“Today In”
shows users news, posts, and events from their local area.

More people shopped online than in stores as the holiday
shopping season kicked off, signaling the end of Black Friday as
we know it. 41.4 million people shopped only online
from Thanksgiving
Day to Cyber
Monday, 6.4 million more than those who shopped
exclusively in stores, according to the National Retail
Federation.

The FTC will investigate whether a multi-billion dollar
business model is getting kids hooked on gambling through video
games. U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire
and other critics of the digital goods have compared loot-box
transactions to gambling and have expressed concerns that the
business model introduces children to addictive behavior.

Ousted CBS chief Les Moonves is facing new sexual
harassment allegations in a detailed investigation by The New
York Times. Moonves is at risk of losing $120
million in severance.

Digital publisher Mic is in talks to sell to Bustle, reports
Recode. Talks reportedly came after Facebook
canceled a Watch video series.