Arbitron buy official: Now “Nielsen Audio”

0

Arbitron and NielsenAfter getting FTC approval 9/21, Nielsen announced it has successfully completed its Arbitron acquisition. Arbitron will become “Nielsen Audio” and be integrated into Nielsen’s U.S. Watch business segment, which provides information and insights to the media and advertising industries across television, radio and online/mobile. Arbitron brings two more hours of influence on consumer purchase behavior and allows the company to weave its data sets together to demonstrate for the benefit of advertisers how effective radio is in a complicated and fragmented media market.


So in other words, radio adds two hours of additional media measurement per day (based on radio’s average time spent per person). TV’s average is five hours; online/mobile is 1 hour, for a total of 8 hours measured per day.

Said Nielsen CEO David Calhoun: “This is a great day for Nielsen and a natural step in our evolution. 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.”

The acquisition ends the story that began 12/17/12 with the announced agreement to buy all of the outstanding common stock of Arbitron for $48 per share or a total of $1.3 billion purchase price, funded by cash on hand and recent debt financing. Nielsen expects $0.26 of accretion to adjusted net income per share during the first full year of operations, and $0.32 of accretion to adjusted net income per share during the second year, reflecting an incremental $0.06 in year two.

Added Calhoun: “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 US. Globally, this is an opportunity to expand our measurement of consumer behavior and introduce audio measurement capabilities in new markets.”

Nielsen will update its full year guidance to include the impact of the Arbitron acquisition during its Q3 earnings conference call, which will be held 10/23.

RBR-TVBR observation: As the integration process moves forward, the acquisition should elevate radio as a medium globally, as companies that rely on Arbitron data will be able to use it with more markets than ever to make their buys. Nielsen has been acquiring and consolidating complimentary companies since 2006 to offer a broader read of consumer behavior and media consumption for media outlets, agencies and advertisers.