CANNES, France —\u00a0Nielsen global product leadership president Steve Hasker<\/a> has put up a spirited defense of his media audience research provider and one of its core measurement tools.<\/p>\n “A lot of people will talk about the GRP (Gross Rating Point<\/a>) being dead,” he tells \u00a0moderator Terence Kawaja<\/a> at this Beet.TV leadership summit.\u00a0“We have never argued it is the be-all and end-all – but (GRP’s) age and gender is a very good place to start.\u00a0Take ‘soccer moms’ – there\u2019s an implicit age and gender in there \u2026 that is both predictable and projectable.”<\/p>\n Hasker adds Nielsen’s GRPs are rounded out with CPMG purchase behavior data and data about 80% of US credit card transactions: “That enables us to move well beyond the GRP.\u00a0We\u2019re in no way beholden to the GRP.”<\/p>\n He also denies Nielsen, so long a leader in media measurement, is suffering from “innovator’s dilemma”, an inability to move forward to stay ahead of disruption.<\/p>\n “Nielsen has been as innovative over the last four or five years as anyone in the media space. There\u2019s no innovator\u2019s dilemma at Nielsen – we\u2019re moving as fast as everyone else.\u00a0I\u2019d like us to move faster … but\u00a0we are significantly more agile now than we were four or five years ago and we will get more agile.”<\/p>\n Hasker was a panelist on a Beet.TV leadership summit on the future of \u00a0television advertising held during Cannes Lions. You can find more segments from the sessions here<\/a>.<\/p>\n