Nielsen acquires Arbitron – now called Nielsen Audio

  Nielsen Holdings N.V.  announced that it has successfully completed its acquisition of Arbitron Inc.

“This is a great day for Nielsen and a natural step in our evolution,” said Nielsen Chief Executive Officer David Calhoun. “Arbitron will allow us to analyze and understand an additional two hours of the U.S. consumer’s day while bringing us another opportunity to provide advertisers with metrics on the effectiveness of the mediums that they advertise on.”

Arbitron is being rebranded Nielsen Audio and will be integrated into Nielsen’s U.S. Watch business segment, which provides information and insights primarily to the media and advertising industries across television, online, mobile and radio.

“Our combined capabilities offer opportunities to measure unmeasured areas that are important to the industries and clients we serve, like streaming audio, out-of-home measurements for television consumption and deeper measurement of multicultural audiences in the U.S.,” said Calhoun. “Globally, this is an opportunity to expand our measurement of consumer behavior and introduce audio measurement capabilities in new markets.”