Arbitron & Nielsen People Meter Response Rates.

Arbitron and Nielsen Media Research announced that the two companies have devised and tested new approaches that yield sample performance indicators (SPI) that are in line with what Nielsen would expect when recruiting and maintaining a set-top meter panel. These measures are substantially higher than those achieved by Arbitron in the first U.S. Market Trial of the PPM in Philadelphia in 2002.

“Our joint effort with Nielsen Media Research has created two similar sets of methods that produced acceptable sample performance indicators in two parallel PPM tests,” said David Lapovsky, executive vice president, Arbitron Inc.
The new methods were different from the 2002 methodology in that they: utilized membership representatives for at least some of the recruitment and on-going maintenance of the panel; increased the financial incentives given to panelists; and included a number of other methodological improvements.

“The new methods increased the 8 -to10 percent response rate seen in the 2002 market trial, to the 33 to 34 percent sample performance indicators seen in recent test results in Philadelphia,” said Mr. Lapovsky. “In our upcoming Houston demonstration market, Arbitron is using one of the methods just developed and tested but using the Arbitron name, Arbitron field representatives and reductions in some of the incentives.”

The two companies’ collaborative Philadelphia tests involved testing two similar methodologies, each in a panel of 100 households. The first panel tested the use of membership representatives to recruit all panelists. The second panel tested a hybrid methodology that uses both representative and phone-based recruiting. Interim results from the first 12 months of the test, which will conclude in a few weeks, indicated sample performance indicators of 33.3 and 33.8 for the first and second panels respectively.

“Nielsen Media Research is impressed with how well the joint development and testing efforts on response rates have gone,” said Jack Oken, General Manager of Nielsen’s Local Business Unit. “By combining Nielsen’s expertise in in-person panel recruitment and Arbitron’s survey recruitment expertise, the joint tests demonstrated our ability to make major improvements over the methodology used in the 2002 test,” he said. “We are particularly interested in the hybrid methodology, which is more cost effective than the other methodology yet performed equally as well.”

Nielsen will closely monitor results from Arbitron’s use of the modified version of this new hybrid methodology in Houston. “Those results will be an important part of our overall analysis of the PPM,” said Mr. Oken, “along with the results of other tests, overall financials, engineering due diligence, and market acceptance of the potential change in the currency.”
Arbitron and Nielsen Media Research will conclude the testing of the two new methods by the end of July. Results of the tests will be shared with clients by the end of the summer when the analyses are complete. At that time the two companies will also share results from the two engineering tests that they have been jointly conducting over the past year: the a meter-sensitivity test and a dual-meter test.

The two companies are exploring the feasibility of using the PPM as a data collection tool for a common panel used for both television and radio audience measurement. Arbitron and Nielsen first announced an agreement in June 2000 to explore the possibility of a joint venture to deploy PPM for local market measurement of television and radio in the United States.