Competitors VNU (owner of Nielsen Media Research) and Arbitron have joined forces on new outdoor media planning software called Outdoor Navigator. The software was developed by IMS, a VNU subsidiary and the largest supplier of media planning software to the ad industry. VNU and Arbitron are still considering their own outdoor media measurement plans. The two companies have a complex relationship of competition and co-operation. They have most notably worked together on Apollo, a project to develop a single-source media and marketing measurement system; as well, NMR has supported Arbitron’s efforts to expand portable people meters. Meanwhile, Arbitron has bowed out of its competition with NMR to develop global positioning satellite technology for use in outdoor audience measurement.
In other measurement news, a task force comprised of members of the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Advertising Research Foundation are pushing an initiative that replaces frequency (number of ad exposures) with engagement, a way to measure (they hope) how the public is consuming mass media choices such as cellphones, the Internet, video games and podcasts. The first step? Defining what ‘engagement’ is. The committee is also proposing a large-scale research project to validate ‘engagement’ as a planning, tracking and ROI metric. The initiative, cheekily called MI4, was intro’d at an ANA conference on marketing accountability last week.
