• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, January 12, 2011

Arbitron wants to ramp up its business measuring out-of-home TV viewing in order to retain clients for the long term, rather than just specific projects.

The company has tracked viewing in bars and other venues for NBC's Olympics coverage and Turner's high-profile sports events. Now, it wants to move into other areas, such as regular viewing of afternoon talk shows at work.

"We need to stop simply piloting stuff, and find those successful projects and get them into a recurring revenue stream, where we can build it once and sell it multiple times," said Sean Creamer, an Arbitron executive vice president.

"We don't want out-of-home, cross-platform to be a custom business, where we build it to spec for each individual customer. We're focusing our attention on those things that we think we can scale," he adds.

Networks have long believed that sports events in particular have heavy viewing in public places, but advertisers are not compensating them in line with those numbers. During the 2010 Olympics, NBC concocted a system to demonstrate the total reach of its coverage across a slew of platforms, and retained Arbitron to track out-of-home viewing and other consumption.

About as large as a cell phone, Arbitron's portable people meters can pick up viewing by detecting audio if a code is embedded in the content. Turner has used the meter system to demonstrate that its baseball and NBA coverage has significant reach beyond the home, providing a viewing lift.

Speaking to investors, Creamer said Turner has re-upped its deal and will continue to work with Arbitron, the radio ratings service. Still, Arbitron would like to add a run of regular clients for out-of-home tracking, such as a syndicator that airs programming solidly watched in the workplace.

Creamer said the OOH offering will be "a supplemental service to the Nielsen ratings as opposed to a replacement service."

The technology so far has not moved the needle on Arbitron's financial results, but Creamer believes it can be a driver as the company looks to "develop some relevance and credibility for the Arbitron name outside of radio."