The wikipedia article very much reads like it was written by a partisan, which is pretty typical of wikipedia's articles on anything classical. It lists a couple of military historians who like the battle because it's tactically impressive (at least as Livy describes it), and Lord Byron, whose opinion is pretty much academically irrelevant. Ancient historians consider it an important battle in the Second Punic War, but the hysterical praise of the battle that wikipedia has seems pretty clearly like the author's editorial opinion--the battle hardly features at all in most undergraduate overviews of the war, and I had to think a little bit to remember the name of the battle.

That Claudius Nero did not receive a triumph has nothing to do with the Carthaginians. Scipio received a triumph over the Carthaginians at the end of the war. The fasti triumphales list fourteen triumphatores over the Carthaginians during the First Punic War. Scipio Aemilianus also celebrated a triumph against the Carthaginians at the end of the Third Punic War. What wikipedia is misunderstanding in triumphal awards is that triumphs were supposed to be awarded for victories in formally declared wars against public enemies, i.e. a iustum bellum. Civil wars and Pompey's war against the pirates did not count (though his war with Mithridates, an extension of his campaign in Cilicia, did). The level of development of a people did not matter, barbarian gentes like the Gauls, Sardinians, Ligurians, and so forth were worthy of triumphs all the time. The Carthaginians certainly were.

The fasti triumphales are missing both the Second and Third Punic Wars, but we know that there were only 22 triumphs between 240 and 201, compared to 56 between 300 and 241 and an impressive 79 between 200 and 141. These numbers are provided by a dissertation submitted by Alyson Maureen Roy that I pulled up just now because I don't want to spend the time chasing down all the sources on every triumph ever for a reddit post, but her figures are definitely in the right ballpark--Roman militarism and triumphs exploded in the early third century and early second century. Why the lack of triumphs, despite the many victories of the second part of the Second Punic War? Although a general fighting under his own auspices (and therefore with the correct magistracy) against a foreign enemy in bellum iustum with enough casualties on the enemy side was eligible for a triumph, he did not necessarily receive it, nor were these the only real requirements. Triumphal processions were requested by the victorious general and voted on by the senate. Incidentally, there is no evidence that Claudius Nero ever requested a triumph. Livy 27.51 says that the dispatch summarizing the battle by Livius and Claudius Nero was read in the senate, which then decreed an ovatio for the battle. There's no evidence that the commanders ever actually applied for a triumph. But in any case, multiple victories against the Second Punic War were denied triumphs despite decisive, overwhelming victories, on several grounds. For one thing, triumphs were rarely awarded for defensive victories. Typically, though not necessarily always (revolts in particular were often fuzzy territory), a triumph was expected to be for a victory fought on the enemy's soil and not to reclaim ground lost. So Fulvius, who retook Capua in 211 as proconsul and retook Lucania and Bruttium from Hannibal as consul for the second time in 209, never received a triumph. Second, and probably more important, a triumph was expected to be a decisive action that brought the war to a conclusion. This was not always the case (the several naval triumphs of the First Punic War were not decisive to the war, although several of them were combined with triumphs over other peoples who were more decisively defeated), but it was typical, and it appears to have been a major factor in the decision not to award triumphs in the Second Punic War. This is explicitly the reason, for example, that Marcellus did not triumph after taking Syracuse. Livy 26.21 tells us that Marcellus applied for a triumph (here the evidence clearly states that Marcellus applied, unlike Claudius Nero) and was denied, on the grounds that the senate had ordered him not to disband his army, but to hand it over to his successor, and that his army was still in the field and incapable of testifying in favor of his request. Both were signs that the war was not yet over, which alone appears in Livy to have been reason to deny the triumph--Marcellus received an ovatio instead. At Livy 39.29 the proconsul L. Manlius requests a triumph (again, explicit reference to the commander actually requesting a triumph) from the senate for his campaign in Spain, and is denied one on the grounds that the war is still on, and that he has shown that by not disbanding his army--Manlius celebrates an ovatio instead, at which he parades a truly spectacular amount of plunder in gold and silver.

So even if Claudius Nero had applied for a triumph, for which there is no evidence, there are plenty of reasons he could have been denied one. The senate had good precedent for denying a triumph for retaking Roman territory and because the war was still ongoing (in Livy's narrative the Romans are still trying, and failing, to negotiate with Hannibal even when they vote an ovatio for Livius and Claudius Nero). Moreover, since the senate held the right to grant or deny a triumph whenever they wanted to, there's no reason to suppose that Livius and Claudius Nero should have received a triumph--as Cato reminded Cicero, the senate could decide not to upgrade a supplicatio even into a triumph if they so chose. The general lack of triumphs over the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War, as opposed to the 14 in the First Punic War, is quite telling--the Romans thought of the war with Hannibal as ongoing and continuous. We hear in Livy of several commanders applying for triumphs, always in non-Carthaginian theaters, and being denied for similar reasons during these years. Even Scipio was denied a triumph in Spain, on the grounds that he did not hold the necessary magistracy. There seems to be nothing terribly unusual about the case of Livius and Claudius Nero here