New CEO, President Leave Comscore as Revenue Falls

Comscore announced Sunday that its new management team was leaving and that first quarter revenue would be down from last year.

The company has initiated a search to find a new permanent CEO.

The measurement company also added former GroupM chairman Irwin Gotlieb to its board. GroupM parent WPP is an investor in Comscore.

Comscore said that CEO Bryan Wiener had resigned. He was named CEO last April. Wiener also resigned from the Comscore board.

In a statement, Wiener said he quit because "the board and I had irreconcilable differences over how to execute the company’s strategy."

The company also said that president Sarah Hofstetter was also resigning. Hofstetter got an $875,000 signing bonus when she joined the company last September.

Dale Fuller, who has been a director of Comscore since March was named interim CEO.

Comscore has been losing money for the past few years and said that based on preliminary results first quarter revenue is expected to be between $100 million and $104 million. A year ago, revenue was $105.9 million and the company reported a $51.5 million loss.

Comscore, a leader in digital ad measurement, agreed to acquire Rentrak, which had expertise in dealing with data from cable set top boxes, in 2015. The combination was expected to challenge Nielsen for leadership in the video measurement business.

Accounting issues cropped up in Comscore’s financial reports, leading to a long, costly re-audit, the departure of several senior executives and a delay in rolling out new products.

Comscore said it expects to announce its first quarter earnings in the first half of May. At that time it will have a conference call and discuss its long-term vision and growth strategy.

In addition to Gotlieb, Comscore said it added Joanne Bradford and Kathi Love to its board.

Bradford is chief marketing officer of Social Finance (SoFi). Before that she was with Pinterest, Yahoo!, Microsoft and BusinessWeek.

Love was president and CEO of GfK MRI for 13 years. She also founded Motherwell Resources LLC, a consulting and executive coaching firm.

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.