Top industry research executives Monday spent the better part of a special Advertising Research Foundation meeting debating how an industry research coalition should operate and who should operate it
- but arrived at no consensus, according to executives attending the discussion at the ARF's offices in New York. Meanwhile,
MediaDailyNews inaccurately reported that the meeting would host
the first public airing of the Nielsen Task Force organized by Congressman Charles Rangel and Nielsen Media Research. At a separate meeting in New York on Monday, members of the task force met to
discuss recommendations they plan to include in the group's final report, which is expected to be released publicly in about two weeks. Executives attending the ARF meeting said there was
considerable debate over exactly how an industry research consortium should be structured, and whether it should operate under the auspices of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the
Association of National Advertisers, and the Advertising Research Foundation. "Everyone thought it was a good idea, but it got caught up in the details," said one participant. According to one
participant, MindShare research chief David Marans admonished the group, asserting that the future of audience measurement belongs not to Nielsen, the ARF, or even the MRC, but to Project Apollo, the
Procter & Gamble-backed venture of Arbitron and Nielsen parent VNU that hopes to measure both media and product usage. "The industry appears to have gone from 60 to 0 in 35 days when it comes to
audience measurement accountability," said the participant
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