ComScore buys TV, film viewership tracker Rentrak in all-stock deal

ComScore, an Internet analytics company, said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire film and TV viewership tracker Rentrak Corp., a move to diversify its media tracking business.

In the all-stock deal, each share of Rentrak will be converted into the right to receive 1.15 shares of ComScore. Rentrak has a market capitalization of $665.9 million.

Once the deal is completed, Rentrak will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reston, Va.-based ComScore. After the merger, ComScore shareholders will own about 66.5% of the combined company, with Rentrak shareholders owning the rest.

Shares of Rentrak, based in Portland, Oregon, fell 0.81% to $43.04 in after-hours trading.

ComScore rose 2% to $42.36.

As more TV and film viewers consume content online, the lines that delineate media platforms have blurred. And ComScore’s acquisition signifies its desire to diversify its analytics and tracking businesses to deal with the broader industry changes and challenge the industry leader, Nielsen. The deal will lead to “a more comprehensive and precise set of solutions for measuring media consumption and advertising across platforms,” the company said.

“Together we have an even more powerful ability to deliver what our clients and the media industry have long been asking for: a comprehensive cross-platform measurement currency that accounts for all the ways in which content is consumed,” ComScore’s CEO Serge Matta said in a statement.

In a statement, Nielsen said it has tools that can measure total audience "comparable across all screens." "All of our data is fully representative of the U.S. population, and we deliver truly independent measurement," it said.

ComScore's acquisition, expected to be completed by early 2016, will generate "at least $20 million" in savings next year and "at least $35 million" in 2017, ComScore said.

Media companies are looking for ways to measure their audiences more precisely as consumers increasingly rely on DVRs, online streaming services and smartphones to watch their shows. The old ways of tracking viewers and listeners are proving inadequate and the audience tracking industry has been scrambling to offer what they say are more effective tools.

“With the advent of digital technology, the time has come to offer the cross-platform measurement systems of the future: through which content owners will ultimately be able to quantify their entire audience," Matta said. “This merger also recognizes the critical importance of combining digital and TV assets for next generation media measurement."