• by November 29, 2004

MEASURE FOR MEASURECAST - In the oddly incestuous field of media research it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell friend from foe. And you don't have to conduct much research to find a better example of that than the on-again, off-again romance of Arbitron and VNU.

Recently, Arbitron was seen warming up to its long-time adversary, entering into deals that potentially could lead to joint ventures between the two companies. But on Monday, Arbitron got into bed with VNU's long-time Web rival comScore Media Metrix. The weird part about that deal, is it is about launching a joint venture for a business that Arbitron had already abandoned: Internet radio ratings. But given Arbitron's core customer base - U.S. radio stations - it must have been a tough business to walk away from.

Even if advertisers have yet to embrace the online radio business, radiocasters and consumers have, and the assumption is that Madison Avenue will follow - if only there were a viable ratings service for them to hang their CPMs on. At least that's what online radio broadcasters seem to believe.

"These ratings will help agencies make online radio a key part of the media mix," boasted David Goldberg, vice president and general manager of music for Yahoo! By providing the still missing ingredient - "accountability" - Goldberg predicts online radio ratings will lead advertisers and agencies to open up the advertising floodgates for the nascent medium.

That, of course, doesn't explain why they didn't do so the first time Arbitron pioneered the field with its ill-fated MeasureCast service. Sure, Arbitron scuttled MeasureCast due to economics and the fact that it needed to devote more of its R&D resources into funding improvements in terrestrial radio broadcasting, as well as the development of the portable people meter, a national marketing panel, and its new-fangled outdoor measurement scheme. It certainly seemed like the prudent thing to do at that time, but it nonetheless has to raise questions in the minds of advertisers and media buyers about the integrity of Arbitron's commitment to the Web radio business.

But as Arbitron New Ventures' Bill Rose notes, there is nothing for Arbitron to lose in this venture, which combines Arbitron's intellectual capital for measuring radio listening with comScore's online measurement systems. And that, says comScore's Lynn Bolger, a one-time Madison Avenue media research diva herself, should be enough to jumpstart the "commercialization of this quickly growing medium." Best of all, she says, the service will measure not only in-home usage of Web radio, but out-of-home locations like college campuses where heavy broadband penetration has been a driving force for Web radio stations.

That's all good news for the Internet radio business, of course, but what does it say about Arbitron's relationship with VNU, whose NetRatings unit competes head-on with comScore, and who is exploring two massive joint-venture opportunities with Arbitron: the Procter & Gamble-backed single-source measurement system known as Project Apollo; as well as a potential TV and radio ratings service based on Arbitron's portable people meters?

Of course, this won't be the first time that Arbitron and VNU - or its Nielsen unit - has competed directly in some areas while allying in others. Even now the two companies already are partners in Scarborough Research.

Then again, now that cash-flush and acquisition hungry VNU has finally liquidated its European directories business, it could be that we may see an even more direct relationship between the two researchers.