VNU to develope In-Store measurement service.

VNU and the In-Store Marketing Institute announced a partnership to launch a global measurement service that will help marketing professionals better understand how to reach and influence consumers while they are in the store and making their final purchasing decisions.

The new service will build on a groundbreaking development effort called P.R.I.S.M. (Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric) conducted in early 2006 by a consortium of retailers and manufacturers led by the In-Store Marketing Institute. The P.R.I.S.M. Project created a new approach to in-store research that gives the retail industry a common language to measure in-store consumer reach. Members of the consortium include 3M, Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Miller Brewing, Procter & Gamble and The Walt Disney Company, with support from retailers, including Albertsons, Kroger, Walgreens and Wal-Mart.

The new service, which will be developed through a new unit of VNU known as Nielsen In-Store, will measure consumer exposure to a fast-growing and powerful array of in-store marketing vehicles, including television and radio, shelf talkers, digital signage, and other point-of-purchase displays. Collectively, these in-store marketing approaches stand as the sixth largest advertising vehicle in the U.S., at $18.6 billion in spending in 2005.

“In-store marketing provides manufacturers and retailers with a unique opportunity to reach a large and responsive consumer audience,” said David L. Calhoun, chairman and CEO of VNU. “Until now, however, no one has been able to measure the impact of in-store marketing clearly and accurately. Nielsen In-Store, working as part of our new NielsenConnect unit, will connect resources and capabilities from across VNU to ‘follow the consumer’ in this critical arena. Working with the Institute, we will deliver an innovative service that will allow our clients to quantify the impact of in-store marketing and assess its value in comparison with other media and marketing options.”

Laura Desmond, CEO for The Americas of Starcom MediaVest Group, added, “As consumers increasingly demand more from marketers, and assume more control over how they choose to receive marketing messages, it’s clear that we need not only to understand but also to master these engagement ‘touchpoints.’ In-store marketing is a critical communications device. It deserves a seat at the table and this partnership between the Institute and VNU now enables this powerful, game-changing service to be delivered to the retail industry.”

The new service will also help retailers improve results through better store layouts, category adjacencies and product selection. “The new information we provide for retailers and manufacturers will help them work more effectively to improve the shopping experience for consumers,” said George Wishart, who has been named global managing director of Nielsen In-Store. “We also will provide the advertising, media and retail industries with a new currency standard that can increase the efficiency of the media buying and selling process.”

Wishart, who, before this appointment, was president and CEO of VNU’s Interactive Market Systems (IMS), a provider of media-planning software, said the new service will draw on the measurement, analytical and marketing capabilities of a number of VNU businesses, including ACNielsen for retail measurement, consumer panel and retailer services; Nielsen Media Research for audience measurement and analysis; and Interactive Market Systems for media planning and modeling. The service will also tap into the retail insights of VNU’s Spectra, Trade Dimensions and BASES businesses, as well as VNU Business Media, which operates the GlobalShop trade show and publishes a number of marketing, media and retailing industry magazines and web sites.

The lead-market phase of the new service will be launched in the U.S. early in 2007 and is designed to fine tune the new metric before it is made widely available to the industry later in the year.