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Ratings measurement firm Nielsen said profit grew in the latest quarter, as lower costs offset a sales decline and the company came up against a favorable comparison.

Nielsen tracks about 1,000 shows and provides media giants such as Comcast Corp.'s NBCUniversal, Time Warner Inc. and 21st Century Fox with data on viewing trends. The New York-based company has in recent months been scaling up a program to track viewing on Netflix and online services such as Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime Instant Video, hoping to stifle criticism that it has been slow to adapt its traditional ratings to changing media consumption habits.

On Wednesday, Chief Executive Mitch Barns said the initial release of its digital content ratings, the last piece of its total audience measurement framework, has gone smoothly.

For the third quarter, the firm reported a profit of $142 million, or 38 cents a share, up from $91 million, or 24 cents, a year earlier. Excluding certain items, per-share profit rose to 69 cents from 66 cents. In the year-before quarter, Nielsen took a debt-refinancing charge that pulled down overall profit.

Revenue declined 2.6% to $1.53 billion. Analysts predicted 69 cents in earnings per share and $1.54 billion in sales, according to Thomson Reuters.

The strong U.S. dollar dented revenue, dragging sales in Nielsen's Buy segment, for consumer-goods manufacturers and retailers, down 7.1% and halving sales in the Watch segment, for media and advertising clients. Stripping out foreign-exchange fluctuations, sales rose 5%, Nielsen said. Sales in the Buy segment rose a currency-adjusted 4.1% while Watch sales grew an adjusted 6.1%.

The company brought down overhead expenses by 1.9% and saw the cost its goods sold fall 5.1%.

Shares in the company, up about 8% this year, were inactive premarket.

Write to Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 21, 2015 08:45 ET (12:45 GMT)

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