• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, December 31, 2008

Walmart is withdrawing from the consortium of retailers, packaged-goods manufacturers and agencies supporting the PRISM in-store media measurement service, the Nielsen Co. disclosed Tuesday.

Nielsen said it will continue work on PRISM (an acronym for Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric), which is expected to introduce a complete metric in 2009. However, the departure of its largest founding member is a setback for the project, one of several high-profile initiatives working in parallel to create new metrics for out-of-home.

It's also more bad news for Nielsen following the cancellation of Project Apollo--a joint venture with Arbitron--and the shuttering of Nielsen Out-of-Home, a proprietary service to measure out-of-home video exposure.

According to Nielsen, Walmart's decision to withdraw was motivated by its own restrictions on sharing data, which prevented full participation in a project calling for a certain degree of openness with research findings. These restrictions were waved temporarily to allow Walmart to participate, but the company has opted not to renew the waiver.

The decision may also have been influenced by the unfolding economic downturn: The low-cost retail giant has fared better than other retailers this holiday season, and may benefit when consumers tighten their belts. But it has also exercised increasingly tight fiscal discipline since profits began shrinking a few years ago.

The other retailers that founded the PRISM consortium--15 in all--are sticking with the project, including Kmart, Target, Albertsons, Walgreens and Kroger. Other members of the consortium include big manufacturers and agencies like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Unilever, General Mills, Kraft, Mattel, OMD and Starcom MediaVest. The consortium supports research and development for in-store media measurement by Nielsen In-Store, in partnership with the In-Store Marketing Institute.

There is concern that the Walmart loss could hobble PRISM.

Indeed, Walmart--along with Procter & Gamble and Starcom MediaVest-- played an integral role in the formation of PRISM in ­­spring 2006. P&G, Starcom and Walmart came together to recruit packaged-goods manufacturers and retailers not long after P&G and Walmart demonstrated their clout by refusing to participate in a similar measurement initiative by POPAI (Point-Of-Purchase Advertising International), which effectively torpedoed it. Now, advertisers, ad agencies and media agencies may see less incentive to support the project, as the nation's leading retailer once again goes its own way.

In September, Walmart unveiled a new Internet-protocol Smart Network, the result of a cooperative effort between Premier Retail Networks, Studio2 and DS-IQ, which will continually analyze point-of-sale figures and dynamically update programming and advertising to maximize sale lift.

Premier Retail Networks is responsible for building and operating the IPTV network as well as ad sales. Studio 2 provides custom programming, and DS-IQ is responsible for measurement, analysis and the message optimization strategy. (The roster at DS-IQ, founded in Bellevue, Wash. in 2003, boasts former top tech executives from Microsoft, Amazon.com, RealNetworks and aQuantive).

Shifting into gossip mode, the decision to leave PRISM could also be delayed fallout from the departure of Walmart's former senior vice president of marketing Julie Roehm two years ago. Roehm, who was at the helm when preliminary research for PRISM was performed in spring of that year, was forced out in December 2006 for alleged favoritism in granting ad and media contracts.

She was also said to have clashed with the retailer's powerful merchandising and consumer research and strategy divisions, which were responsible for creating the Smart Network. Walmart did not hesitate to pull the plug on another of Roehm's initiatives: an online media exchange also organized as a consortium.

The PRISM departure is another setback for Nielsen, coming a little less than two months after it shut down Nielsen Out-of-Home, a new service launched to measure TV viewing outside the home in partnership with IMMI. Despite demand from some high-profile networks, especially sports-oriented programmers like ESPN and Turner Sports, and a commitment from Publicis' Zenith Media unit to use the new service, Nielsen and IMMI said they were suspending the service due to economic concerns.