“Arbitron will allow us to analyze and understand an additional two hours of the United States consumer’s day while bringing us another opportunity to provide advertisers with metrics on the effectiveness of the mediums that they advertise on,” David L. Calhoun, Nielsen’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Arbitron, which was founded in 1949 as the American Research Bureau, will be renamed Nielsen Audio, and will be integrated into Nielsen’s U.S. Watch division, the company announced. The deal was announced in December, with Nielsen agreeing to pay $48 a share for Arbitron.
For services like Nielsen, which is best known for its television ratings but also collects data on retail spending and Internet and radio usage, the crucial challenge is how to monitor and measure consumers’ interaction with media outlets across various platforms, sometimes simultaneously.
One benefit for Nielsen will be access to Arbitron’s Portable People Meter, a small electronic device that records all the radio signals that a person comes into contact with during the day — an innovation that has given the radio business a much more detailed look at its listeners’ habits than ever before.
The Federal Trade Commission investigated the deal out of concerns that it would lessen competition among media tracking companies. Earlier this month, the agency announced a settlement that obliges Nielsen to license its data and technology — including the Portable People Meter — to another company for eight years.
Neither the F.T.C. nor Nielsen has announced a buyer for those services, but the most likely one is comScore, which entered into a cross-platform measurement deal with ESPN and Arbitron three months before Nielsen bought Arbitron.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/business/media/nielsen-completes-1-26-billion-purchase-of-arbitron.html?partner=rss&emc=rss