Nielsen Sees The Light, Shutters PRISM

The faltering economy claimed another promising out-of-home media measurement service, with the Nielsen Co.'s announcement Friday afternoon that it had suspended its Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric, or PRISM.

The news came about a month after Walmart withdrew from the consortium of retailers, packaged-goods manufacturers and agencies supporting PRISM, and about three months after the closing of Nielsen Out-of-Home, a new service launched to measure TV viewing outside the home in partnership with IMMI.

Nielsen vowed that PRISM would fight on despite Walmart's exit, but skeptics said the loss of a founding member and key driver effectively doomed the effort.

In 2006, Procter & Gamble, Starcom and Walmart came together to recruit packaged-goods manufacturers and retailers for PRISM. The move came after P&G and Walmart demonstrated their clout by refusing to participate in a similar measurement initiative by POPAI (Point-Of-Purchase Advertising International)--effectively torpedoing it.

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But in December 2008, Walmart decided not to renew its waiver of a corporate rule against sharing data with competitors; it signaled its intention to withdraw, citing the cost of the service. The low-cost retail giant has exercised increasingly tight fiscal discipline since profits began shrinking a few years ago.

Instead, Walmart is moving ahead with a sophisticated system for delivering in-store media and advertising. In September, the company unveiled the 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 sales lift.

Premier Retail Networks is responsible for building and operating the IPTV network, as well as ad sales. Studio 2 provides custom programming, while 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).

The closing of PRISM is 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. 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 suspended the service because of economic concerns.

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