Arbitron, VNU sign marketing research deal; P&G to collaborate
Arbitron and VNU announced a deal to jointly explore the possible development of a new, national marketing research service, using Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPM), which collects multi-media and purchase info from a common sample of consumers. The service will be designed to enable a better understanding of consumer exposure to advertising on multiple media and the link to their shopping/purchase behavior. The ultimate objective would be to provide advertisers with an enhanced ability to determine ROI for their marketing efforts.
Procter & Gamble will collaborate with the two companies to ensure that the service properly addresses the needs of marketers. Both Arbitron and VNU emphasized that the service would be separate, distinct and designed very differently from any service for TV and radio ratings.
The service would consist of a panel of participants who would be incented to voluntarily carry Arbitron's PPM. Data on consumer preference and purchases for a wide range of services and products would also be collected from panelists, electronically and via surveys, with some households being part of ACNielsen's Homescan consumer panel, which currently tracks packaged goods purchases. Data would be collected in aggregate form to provide a holistic understanding of participants' media interactions and their resulting shopping and purchase behavior.
P&G spokesperson Martha Depenbrock tells RBR P&G has been very clear in communicating to the industry the need for new market measurement techniques and tools: "We see this as a need for the entire industry and we're very excited that as this type of service is being developed, it will really enable us to better understand how our consumers interact with multiple media. And when and where they are most receptive to our brand messages; and really tie in the purchase intent. So it holds promise and we're excited to be collaborating on this."
Do you think PPM is the technology to get the job done?
"It's still in the early exploration stage, so I can't really comment on how everything's going to work out, but we think it holds promise and we're excited about it."
Arbitron spokesperson Thom Mocarsky tells RBR: "This gives planners and buyers insight into how consumers use media, because it is a multimedia tool. This isn't ratings, but it does give insight into the consumers' 'day in the life' with the media. We're going to use the PPM to do any media with audio; we're going to use other tools to track other media - - print is going to be a part of this, newspaper, etc. It's going to give people better insight as to how consumers actually use media, from a planning perspective, not a ratings perspective. And then you begin to see the cause and effect - - you begin to see what I'm exposed to and what I do in the marketplace. And that's the ultimate ROI, for media, for marketers."
He adds, "And from a radio perspective, this puts radio right up there with all the other media. It's electronic measurement of radio. All the arguments we've been making on the ratings side have got to happen on the marketing side too. It puts radio up there on par with the other media, and that can only advantage radio."
RBR observation:
One thing this deal is NOT is part of the PPM collaboration between Arbitron and Nielsen Media Research, even though the latter is owned by VNU. This PPM usage is not for radio or TV ratings and Nielsen Media Research is making it very clear that it will carry on its own testing with Arbitron before deciding whether it is going to use PPM for TV ratings.
Are you reading this from a forwarded email?
