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An Open Letter to the Media Industry:
With the Houston demonstration of our Portable People Meter (PPM™) service now under way, I wanted to share Arbitron’s vision for electronic measurement and preview some of the coming insights.
PPM is a high-definition, continuous, portable, passive, electronic measurement system. In a few weeks, 2,100 consumers in Houston—age 6 and above—will be carrying the PPM, and we’ll be tracking their daily exposure to radio and television, as well as their visits to selected stores, sporting events and even the movies. More than 100 media outlets, including radio, broadcast TV and cable TV, are participating.
PPM provides advertisers with credible measures for improved ROI and accountability: Advertisers are under intense pressure, from investors and within, to ensure they’re making good advertising decisions and getting a sufficient return on investment. At a recent Advertising Research Foundation meeting, Mark Kaline, media manager, Ford Motor Company, said, “Clients have entered the age of accountability...at Ford, marketing is looked at as an expense, and we are under attack to prove our worth.” Credible audience research is a vital component of accountability.
National advertisers require faster feedback on their campaigns: Imagine if you bought a stock and had to wait four months first to see how your investment performed. Today, national advertisers have to wait that long for a survey to be released to see what kind of audience their campaign delivered. The PPM dramatically compresses the time window between when audiences are exposed to ads and when the results are available.
The New York Times Magazine recently published a thorough report on technological advances in audience measurement, including the PPM. The views expressed by agencies and advertisers in the article reinforce our efforts to deliver enhanced audience measurement. If you haven’t had a chance to see the article, you can read it here.
Exciting times ahead: We all have a great deal to look forward to this fall when we begin to delve into the PPM data from Houston. You’ll be hearing more from me in the near future. We’ll have a lot to discuss and explore together!
Sincerely,
Pierre Bouvard
