Arbitron Announces PPM Ratings Report Schedule for Philadelphia
All Ratings for Philadelphia Produced with Paper-and-Pencil Diaries—Including Arbitrends—End With Release of Fall 2006 Survey on January 11;
Electronic Measurement of Philadelphia Radio Market Begins on January 11
NEW YORK, January 9, 2007 – Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) will release on Thursday, January 11, the very last radio ratings for Philadelphia that it plans to produce by paper-and-pencil diaries: the Fall 2006 Philadelphia Local Market Report. The company also announced the delivery schedule for the new electronic Portable People MeterTM (PPMTM) ratings service that will begin for the radio market on January 11.
The Fall 2006 diary-based ratings report is being designated the “currency” in the market until the release of the March 2007 PPM ratings report. The January 2007 and February 2007 PPM radio ratings reports are to be released as demonstration data.
“We have truly ended an era with the delivery of the Radio Market Report for the Fall Survey. These are the very last ‘currency’ radio ratings for Philadelphia that we intend to tabulate using entries written in diaries,” said Jay Guyther, senior vice president, Rating Services, Arbitron Inc. “The arrival of the PPM service also means the end of Arbitrends for Philadelphia. Instead of Winter Phase 1 and 2 Arbitrends reports, subscribing stations will receive monthly PPM-based audience estimates using the installed PPM sample, which is planned to be 2,040 persons, age 6 and older.”
Philadelphia stations and agencies, however, will only have to wait a few short weeks. The first PPM monthly audience estimates are scheduled to release on February 28 for the monthly survey of January 11 to February 7.
PPM subscribers should receive the electronic ratings 21 days after the end of each monthly survey, including a “Holiday Survey” for listening between December 13, 2007 and January 9, 2008. See delivery schedule.
In addition, subscribing radio broadcasters should begin receiving weekly PPM data beginning March 28th, covering the first four weeks of the February survey. Weekly downloads will begin April 2nd, beginning with the period of 3/8 - 3/14.
“Our PPM panel design supports weekly reporting with the same large sample sizes as the monthly reports, so the PPM Weeklies will be 52 discrete reports—not rolling averages—with the same demos and dayparts as delivered in our current Arbitrends service,” added Guyther.
The monthly PPM ratings for Philadelphia will be available in three different formats:
PPM e-book--the Radio Market Report delivered electronically
(first delivered February 28 for the monthly survey of January 11 to February 7)summary-level data, including ethnic reports--released to licensed third-party software providers that have prepared their applications for the PPM data
(first delivered February 28 for the monthly survey of January 11 to February 7);respondent-level data--for use in the PPM Analysis Tool software
(first delivered March 28 for the monthly survey of February 8 to March 7 and will include the January survey as back data.)
To date, more than a dozen third-party processors—including Strata, Donovan, Harris, MRP and Tapscan—are licensed to receive and use PPM Summary Data.
In response to recent recommendations made by the Arbitron Radio Advisory Council and the Advertiser/Agency Advisory Council, the PPM rollout schedule in Philadelphia and in subsequent markets is designed to:
· Allow subscribing stations and agencies to get the full value of their final diary-based ratings report;
· Ensure that there is only one “currency” for the buying and selling of radio advertising by eliminating any overlap in the use of PPM-based and diary-based ratings;
· Provide two individual months of PPM-based ratings before eliminating diary measurement to allow users to understand the differences between the two methods in each market; and
· Give radio stations and agencies more time to train their sales and buying staffs on how to do business in an electronically measured marketplace.
About the Portable People Meter
The Arbitron Portable People Meter system uses a passive audience measurement device – about the size of a small cell phone – to track consumer exposure to media and entertainment, including broadcast, cable and satellite television; terrestrial, satellite and online radio as well as cinema advertising and many types of place-based electronic media. Carried throughout the day by randomly selected survey participants, the PPM device can track when and where they watch television, listen to radio as well as how they interact with other forms of media and entertainment.
In its current form, the PPM detects inaudible codes embedded in the audio portion of media and entertainment content delivered by broadcasters, content providers and distributors. The company is field testing an enhanced version of the meter that can also collect audio signatures for any radio station, which are later matched to signatures collected by an in-market monitoring system.
At the end of the day, the meter is placed in a docking station that extracts the codes and signatures and sends them to a central computer. The PPM is equipped with a motion sensor, a patented quality control feature unique to the system, which allows Arbitron to confirm the compliance of the PPM survey participants every day.
About Arbitron
Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) is an international media and marketing research firm serving radio broadcasters, cable companies, advertisers, advertising agencies and outdoor advertising companies in the United States, Mexico and Europe. Arbitron’s core businesses are measuring network and local market radio audiences across the United States; surveying the retail, media and product patterns of local market consumers; and providing application software used for analyzing media audience and marketing information data. The Company has also developed the Portable People Meter system, a new technology for media and marketing research.
Arbitron’s marketing and business units are supported by its research and technology organization, located in Columbia, Maryland. Arbitron has approximately 1,800 employees; its executive offices are located in New York City.
Through its Scarborough Research joint venture with VNU, Inc., Arbitron also provides media and marketing research services to the broadcast television, magazine, newspaper and online industries.
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Portable People MeterTM and PPMTMare marks of Arbitron Inc.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The statements regarding Arbitron Inc. and its subsidiaries (“we,” “Arbitron” or the “Company”) in this document that are not historical in nature, particularly those that utilize terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “likely,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “estimates,” “believes,” or “plans,” or comparable terminology, are forward-looking statements based on current expectations about future events, which Arbitron has derived from information currently available to it. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our results to be materially different from results implied in such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include whether we will be able to:
• renew contracts with large customers as they expire;
• successfully execute our business strategies, including implementation of our Portable People MeterTM system and entering into joint-venture or other material third-party agreements;
• effectively manage the impact of any further consolidation in the radio and advertising agency industries;
• keep up with rapidly changing technological needs of our customer base, including creating new proprietary software systems and new customer products and services that meet these needs in a timely manner;
• successfully manage the impact on our business of any economic downturn generally and in the advertising market in particular;
• successfully manage the impact on costs of data collection due to lower respondent cooperation in surveys, privacy concerns, consumer trends, technology changes and/or government regulations;
• successfully develop and implement technology solutions to measure multi-media and advertising in an increasingly competitive environment; and
• successfully obtain and/or maintain Media Rating Council accreditation for our audience measurement services.
Additional important factors known to Arbitron that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements are identified and discussed from time to time in Arbitron’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, in particular, the risk factors discussed under the caption “ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS” in Arbitron’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005.
The forward-looking statements contained in this document speak only as of the date hereof, and Arbitron undertakes no obligation to correct or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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