Arbitron Reports 8.3% Q3 Revenue Rise

Ratings giant Arbitron has reported an 8.3% rise in third quarter revenue to $114.3m, while net income increased to $15.8m from $15.4m.

Costs for the third quarter increased by 11.4% to $86.1m from $77.2m in Q3 2011, driven by expenses associated with recruitment, address-based sampling and cell-phone household sampling, as well as increased investments in Arbitron Mobile.

Additionally, costs included a pre-tax, non-cash charge of $0.9m, relating to internal software used to enhance the firm's cross-platform methodologies.

During the period, the company worked towards the phase-in of contracted price increases for the Portable People Meter (PPM) service, as well as annual rises in its multi-year radio ratings contracts.

President and CEO Bill Kerr (pictured) comments: 'In the third quarter, we continued to grow our revenue and earnings as we maintained our investments in the value and utility of our core services and continued to invest in the opportunities presented by the emerging markets of mobile and cross-platform.'

For the nine months ended September 30, 2012, net income increased 11.2% to $43.6m, while revenue increased 7.6% to $325.1m. Costs and expenses for the period increased by 7.3% to $255.0m.

For the full-year 2012, Arbitron is expecting revenue to increase between 5% and 7% above its 2011 revenue of $422.3m.

Web site: www.arbitron.com .