A day after pulling the plug on Project Apollo (2/26/08 RBR #39), Arbitron issued revised guidance to investors. The company said it still expects revenues to rise 8-10% in 2008, but that earnings per share for the full year will be in a range of 1.30-1.44, down from the previous guidance of 1.42-1.56. While Arbitron is dissolving its joint venture with Nielsen that had run the Project Apollo test, Arbitron CEO Steve Morris said his company is going to take the lessons learned from the experiment and continue to seek new opportunities for using its Personal People Meter (PPM) technology for multi-media research, although he’s not yet willing to discuss any specifics. Morris declared Nielsen “a terrific partner” in the test and noted that many folks on the advertiser/agency found the single-source, multi-media data valuable, but when it came down to getting enough clients to make the financial commitments necessary to commercialize Project Apollo, “the critical mass wasn’t there.”
