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Back to Articles page at TNG Research Breaking Up Is Hard to Doby Dave Zornow It's sad to see a couple break up a long relationship. In 2000, they announced their engagement and talked about sharing expenses and someday settling down in a joint venture. But it didn't work out. Two weeks ago, Nielsen left Arbitron at the portable people meter altar, citing irreconcilable differences over response rates, implementation costs and the best way to measure TV. Arbitron's recent announcement that they will rollout the PPM in the top 50 markets shows they are on the rebound. "Although we saw some economic benefits for our customers from a joint venture, Arbitron now has complete flexibility to meet the needs of our [radio] customers," said President/CEO Steve Morris. Nielsen says things have changed since the couple first decided to set up lab together in May 2000. “Television is a different medium and the PPM was, of course, originally developed in the early 1990s to measure radio audiences,” says Susan Whiting, Nielsen president and CEO. Maybe it was Nielsen’s wandering eyes, tempted by the latest technology, that made a breakup inevitable. “There have been considerable advances in engineering, software and metering technology that we believe create more attractive alternatives for television measurement than the PPM,” says Whiting. But the news isn’t all bad. The five year fling produced an offspring named Apollo, to whom both companies have pledged support. Using Arbitron’s PPM technology in conjunction with resources from Nielsen Media Research and AC Nielsen, Apollo focuses on marketers and has the backing of P&G and other major CPG companies. After five years together, what has the pair learned? Nielsen is a smarter company having explored portable technology to measure out of home viewing, the Achilles’ heel of TV household panels. Although Arbitron didn’t get a partner to share PPM deployment costs for radio, their credibility with agencies and investors got a huge lift from their association with Nielsen. Perhaps Arbitron should have seen the writing on the wall when Nielsen began to invest heavily in local people meter rollouts three years ago using their own technology. The news only confirmed what mutual friends had been whispering for a long time: it’s over. ## Dave Zornow is President/TNG Research, a media research consultancy and applications development company that works with media sellers and research providers. |