• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 15, 2009

Two of the media research industry's best known executives moved to new, prominent roles. Bill McKenna was named president-CEO of Integrated Media Measurement Inc., while Henry Laura was named vice president-media at Knowledge Networks.

The moves are the latest in an ongoing sea change of executives in the media research industry, including some whom have been laid off from senior positions at agencies, media companies, and research providers. Recently, highly regarded media researchers Rob Frydelwicz was let go from a senior position at Universal McCann and Hugh White was laid off from Ipsos, where he headed its "Business Elite" study.

McKenna joins IMMI from CEO of WPP's Kantar Media Research North America and Mediafax units. McKenna, who is chairman and founder of Mediafax - the leading provider of media and marketing research in the Caribbean marketplace - will continue to play a role in that company. Mediafax is an operating unit of WPP's Kantar division, which made a significant strategic investment in IMMI last year. Until it was shut down recently, IMMI was in a joint venture with Nielsen Co. to measure out-of-home television viewing. IMMI continues to measure it on its own. WPP also recently dissolved a long-time partnership with Nielsen, in an exchange of research assets.

"We are focusing our resources on the completion of a single-source, cross-platform measurement product that tracks media consumption on television, computer screen, mobile device and radio, and look forward to launching our new multi-screen panels in the not-too-distant future," stated Tom Zito, chairman and co-founder of IMMI.

Laura, meanwhile, joins Knowledge Networks from TNS Media Intelligence, were he was responsible for developing services for advertisers and agencies, including customized databases of competitive expenditures. Before that, he was a member of the team at Arbitron working to integrate quantitative and qualitative offerings in North America.