In Depth
Arbitron, Nielsen Ground Project Apollo
Arbitron and the Nielsen Co. said they have terminated the development of Project Apollo, a research system that gathered data on media usage and store sales in order to measure advertising effectiveness.
“Despite a promising level of interest, we did not secure sufficient client commitments to make Project Apollo a sustainable venture for our two companies,” Arbitron and Nielsen said Monday in a joint statement.
Seven advertisers, led by Procter & Gamble, signed on as members of the Project Apollo steering committee.
There had been great hopes that, by linking Arbitron portable people meter data with in-store register scanner information, new insights about how media advertising worked could be gleaned. But the project was expensive and some executives said the results were underwhelming.
A national panel of 11,000 people in 5,000 households was deployed in January 2006.


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