• March 14, 2008

The Nielsen Co. and Integrated Media Measurement Inc. announced that Zenith Media Services, Inc. will be the first company to use The Nielsen Out-Of-Home Report, a service of Nielsen and IMMI that measures out-of-home viewers.

The national service, which will be available in April, will give Zenith Media access to an all-electronic cell-phone based measurement for television viewing that occurs outside of the home in bars, hotels, airports and other locations. The service will provide program, time-period and market break reports to help clients understand and analyze the out-of-home audience.

This marks the first time Nielsen will offer ongoing audience estimates of television viewing in out-of-home locations.

Nielsen is offering the national out-of-home measurement service as well as local out-of-home services in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Denver. Sample participants are asked to carry mobile phones that include metering technology developed by IMMI. The phones collect passive digital signatures from television telecasts that IMMI will match with audio signatures collected by IMMI from actual telecasts. The signatures are then transmitted to IMMI computer servers for reporting.

--Tanya Irwin