"While our company policy is not to respond to speculation or future announcements, we have been in direct contact with many of our clients, including some cited in the original article," Whiting wrote in reference to the story first published late last week by the Financial Times that some of Nielsen's biggest customers - the major U.S. TV networks, agencies and big advertisers such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever - are part of the consortium.

"Much of what was reported by the Financial Times remains unclear, and many of our clients are themselves looking for answers to questions raised by the story," Whiting continued. "What is clear, however, is that three screen measurement is at the center of our strategy."

Whiting concluded by disclosing that some of Nielsen's largest clients have recently "renewed multi-year contracts with us for television, online, mobile and other measurement services," but she did not specify which ones.

According to the reports, the consortium does not necessarily plan to compete directly with Nielsen, but is being launched to provide an alternative source of three screen audience data derived from digital set-tops, online and mobile servers, to complement Nielsen's survey based research products.

A number of Nielsen rivals have begun to commercialize audience measurement services derived from digital set-top data, and Nielsen has also been cultivating new products in that area, recently appointing one of its top researchers, Manish Bhatia, to run the project.

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