Todd Krizelman: Celebs Rumors

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor More investors are counting on the ability to count advertising dollars. Thompson Street Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and Endicott Capital, an investment entity focused on information services, have made a strategic investment in MediaRadar, a tracker of advertising outlays. It is the latest transaction to have financial players gravitate to the discipline of measuring ad spending. Thompson will take a controlling stake in the business, though financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. In an interview, Todd Krizelman, MediaRadar’s founder and CEO, indicated the investments would be utilized to create more products around such areas as retail media and social media, but also to help gain scale in the marketplace. As more media entities start to offer their own methodologies for being measured, Krizelman said, the marketplace is likely to seek a single third-party entity to examine spending. “That’s a missing puzzle piece, for sure,” he said.

With the NBA and Major League Baseball scheduled to return after pandemic-fueled delays (NBA players began arriving at Disney on Tuesday), it’s clear that the relationship between the leagues, the TV networks and big-name advertisers is one of mutual necessity. The lack of live sports between March and the end of June resulted in $2.6 billion in lost revenue for the TV networks, according to the ad sales intelligence platform MediaRadar.