Arbitron, which began over 60 years as a TV audience measurement company, long ago ceded that market to Nielsen, which coincidentally began as a radio ratings company. Even so, Arbitron is now building a nice side business to its radio ratings by measuring out-of-home viewing for TV networks.
As Arbitron reported its Q3 financial results COO Sean Creamer (pictured) told analysts and investors that the company had recently signed a new TV client – NBCUniversal’s CNBC, which is now using Portable People Meter (PPM) data to measure our-of-home viewing by its affluent audience.
| Sean Creamer |
CNBC joins CNN, Headline News, TBS, TNT and TruTV as subscribers to Arbitron’s PPM-based out-of-home TV service.
Arbitron has been focusing on using its PPM panels, already in place for radio measurement, for various cross-platform audience measurement. The company recently reported on a study it conducted for Entravision in Denver showing the impact of advertising on the broadcaster’s radio and television stations in the market at different times of the day. Creamer indicated Tuesday (10/25) that Arbitron is currently doing a radio-TV study nationwide for an unidentified “key network” client.
RBR-TVBR observation: Just as no media company is now delivering content on a single platform, the ratings companies don’t have a future if they deliver audience data for only one platform. That means that Nielsen and Arbitron may be butting heads as competitors in some places, but they may also be partners in others. And they have to find other partners as well, just as Arbitron just did with AdsWizz.
