Nielsen buy Arbitron in US

In September, CRA announced they would be calling for tenders to be submitted for the provision of radio audience measurement commencing in January 2014, following the expiry of Nielsen Media Research's contract at the end of 2013.

Interesting news is that Nielsen, which is the main source of TV ratings in the US, has agreed to buy Arbitron for $1.26 billion.

Arbitron pay 7,000 people to carry people meter's to determine radio ratings in the US.

When looking into Arbitron, Nielsen CEO David Calhoun said, the most important question asked was:

"’Do we believe in the medium (radio) in the long haul?’ and the answer was an unequivocal ‘yes.’”

“It helps bring radio more into the centre part of the advertising mix,” Arbitron CEO Bill Kerr said.

Calhoun promised to produce new ROI metrics for radio, an area where the industry falls short when compared to TV and the internet.

The Nielsen CEO also said another major driver for the deal is that they want to spread Arbitron's tracking technology to other countries (maybe here ?)