NEW YORK—Nielsen Holdings has announced a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleVerify in an all-cash transaction valued at about $2.15 billion.
DoubleVerify is a leading software platform that offers solutions for verifying media quality, optimizing ad performance, and proving campaign outcomes,
The deal comes at a time when Nielsen faces increasing competition from a number of other companies and many industry players continue to express frustration with the state of audience measurement in the streaming era.
The combination, Nielsen said, would to provide clients clear, verified, and independent data and would help advertisers improve their campaigns and outcomes.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.
“Over the last few years, Nielsen has undergone a fundamental transformation — accelerating product innovation; expanding our platform across the full media lifecycle, from discovery and planning through measurement and outcomes; and strengthening our financial foundation,” Karthik Rao, CEO of Nielsen, said in announcing the deal.
“This combination will unite two organizations focused on strengthening independence and trust in advertising, Rao continued. “Joining forces with DoubleVerify will extend our capabilities deeper into the digital media industry, ensuring that the spend flowing between buyers and sellers is reaching real people in brand-suitable environments, through verified channels. As advertising workflows become increasingly automated, together we can offer publishers, advertisers, agencies, and platforms a truly independent, end-to-end partner that connects trusted audience intelligence with verified media delivery — across every screen, every channel, and every transaction – enabling superior decisions and outcomes.”
“Today’s announcement is an exciting milestone for DoubleVerify,” added Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. “As a private entity with the support of Nielsen, we will have access to expanded resources to deliver new, market-leading solutions that drive exceptional value for our customers and partners. DoubleVerify’s MRC-accredited quality signals, in combination with Nielsen’s deduplicated cross-screen audience measurement, will fuel genuine market innovation – a single currency that scores media on both audience delivery and media environment quality. I’m proud of the strong momentum we’ve built for DoubleVerify as the leading media effectiveness platform, the strength of our AI-powered measurement and optimization platform, and the exceptional work of our team.
Nielsen described the key benefits of the transaction as follows:
- Extends Nielsen’s Platform Across the Full Media Intelligence Stack: Nielsen’s platform already spans the entire media lifecycle — from content discovery and audience planning through cross-platform measurement and outcome attribution. DoubleVerify adds the layer of independent verification that the impressions underpinning every campaign are real, viewable, brand-suitable, and free from invalid traffic. Today, advertisers must reconcile these signals across separate vendors. The combination unifies them into a single, integrated platform covering audience, context, and delivery quality.
- Expands Nielsen’s Addressable Market into High-Growth Digital Channels: DoubleVerify sits at the operational core of how digital advertising is bought and sold, with integrations embedded into the day-to-day workflows of the platforms, publishers, and agency groups that execute the world’s largest campaigns. Nielsen products already power media decisions across television, streaming, audio, and sports. By coming together, Nielsen will reach across the full breadth of the $240 billion digital advertising segment, giving clients a better partner as budgets continue to shift toward digital channels. The combination delivers global, end-to-end, independent, transparent measurement and optimization across linear TV, CTV, social, mobile and AI platforms.
- Preserves Independent Verification Standards the Industry Depends On: The combined company will continue to support the open, independent standards that are highly valued by global advertisers. This includes preserving DoubleVerify’s industry-leading capabilities in invalid traffic detection, viewability and brand suitability.
- Helps Enable a Reliable, Trusted Shift to AI in Advertising: As AI-driven planning, activation, and optimization shape how campaigns are built and executed, the combined company will help enable the advertising industry to adopt AI with confidence, with the verified data, outcome signals, infrastructure, and platform integrations necessary to execute the spectrum of advertising workflows.
Under the terms of the agreement, Nielsen will acquire DoubleVerify for $13.60 per share in an all-cash transaction, representing a 30% premium to DoubleVerify’s 60-trading day volume weighted average price as of August 5, 2026. The value per share implies an enterprise value of approximately $2.15 billion for DoubleVerify.
The transaction, which has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies, is expected to close by the first quarter of 2027, subject to approval by DoubleVerify shareholders, receipt of required regulatory approvals, and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.
The transaction will be financed through a combination of committed debt financing provided by Barclays, BofA Securities and Citi, incremental equity financing and cash on hand at Nielsen.
Upon completion of the transaction, DoubleVerify will become a privately held company as part of Nielsen and DoubleVerify common stock will no longer be listed on any public market. DoubleVerify will continue to operate under the DoubleVerify name and brand.
Funds affiliated with Providence Equity Partners LLC (“Providence”) that own approximately 11.8% of DoubleVerify’s outstanding shares of common stock as of August 5, 2026, have agreed to vote their shares in favor of the transaction. As part of the transaction, Providence will conclude its investment upon close.
