• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 17, 2005

A speech delivered Wednesday morning by Nielsen CEO Susan Whiting during Nielsen's annual client meetings in Miami was supposed to rally its customers, update them on key initiatives and set a tone for how Nielsen was managing the future. It ended up antagonizing a potentially important partner, Arbitron.

Addressing the status of Arbitron's portable people meter test, Whiting said that "due to some technological issues, Arbitron has removed the PPM devices in Houston," the market Arbitron has been developing for its next field test of the promising new meter, which can measure both TV and radio, and potentially other media.

Not so, says Arbitron, which shot back with a statement of its own calling Whiting's comments erroneous.

"This is not the case. What Arbitron is doing is maintaining the high quality of the panel we have already recruited while replacing the meters within each of those homes," explained Thom Mocarsky, vice president-communications, at Arbitron.

He said Arbitron currently has more than 1,300 people in Houston who are installed as part of the PPM demonstration panel, and that a "small number" of their meters were found to have a glitch. "To ensure the quality of our research, we are replacing every meter in the field. Once all of these meters have been replaced, we will again begin recruiting new panel members," he explained.

The tussle is the latest in what has been a rocky relationship between Arbitron and Nielsen Media Research, which retains an option to joint venture with Arbitron on the roll out of a TV and radio measurement service based on the PPM technology if it proves valid and if the market supports it. However, Nielsen executives have been anything but supportive of those plans, refusing to participate in the Houston test, or even lend the Nielsen name in support of recruiting or installing the panel.

Whiting's remarks on Wednesday also indicated lackluster support for the technology.

Citing "a number of engineering and sample issues," as well as "some client concerns about how a passive exposure to an audio code will affect the standard definition of viewing," Whiting said the PPM "is not a panacea. While our work with Arbitron shows promise, I am convinced that measuring our changing, portable, expanding, diverse population of consumers and their technologies will require multiple approaches to audience measurement."

Ironically, a number of major advertisers, including Procter & Gamble, as well as Arbitron and Nielsen's own parent VNU, believe the PPM may be a panacea for another area of consumer research, and are aggressively soliciting support to develop a single-source system measuring media exposure and product usage utilizing PPMs. That system, dubbed Project Apollo, was also pitched by Nielsen and P&G executives on Wednesday in a session that followed Whiting's speech.

Meanwhile, Arbitron's Mocarsky confirmed that the replacement of the Houston PPMs has delayed the target date for reaching its sample goal of 2,100 people to June 30 from its original date of April 30.