• October 4, 2005

Arbitron and VNU have dropped their asking price for subscriptions and begun pitching media outlets for subscriptions to their new Project Apollo single-source measurement system, reports Adweek magazine. Citing broadcast and cable network executives, the trade pub said the two research companies have slashed the cost they plan to charge marketers to $350,000 per year from an initial price tag of $1 million for Apollo, a system that simultaneously measures audience exposure to media using Arbitron's portable people meters and product purchases via ACNielsen's HomeScan panel. To prove the efficacy of the system, Arbitron and VNU will begin a live market trial in January, and have been courting electronic media outlets to encode their programming in order to ensure that it can be tracked during the test.