• Ad Age, Wednesday, December 31, 2008 11 AM

Wal-Mart is pulling out of Nielsen's PRISM (Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric) service that tracks the effectiveness of in-store advertising and merchandising, reports Jack Neff. Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Starcom MediaVest Group and the In-Store Marketing Institute began the project in 2006; Nielsen joined later.

Nielsen says it continues to make "great progress" toward its 2009 launch of PRISM, and that 15 of the 16 original retailers in the PRISM consortium, including Target, Kmart, Kroger and Walgreens, are still on board. Nielsen says original marketer and agency backers of PRISM continue to support the initiative, too, including P&G, Unilever and Kraft.

An executive for one PRISM consortium member who spoke on the condition of anonymity, however, says Wal-Mart's pullout is "definitely going to put a crimp in things." And an online survey by Retailwire.com finds that 49% of respondents believe Wal-Mart's pullout will affect the value of PRISM significantly, with 35% saying the impact will be moderate, and just 13% maintaining it will have little or no impact.

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