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Nielsen and IMMI Shut Down OOH Service
The Nielsen Company and partner IMMI have mothballed their recently launched out-of-home (OOH) television viewing measurement service with immediate effect. The companies blamed difficult economic times, which had led to 'limited economic support' for the service.
Despite attracting a great deal of publicity, the service only won two actual clients, ESPN and Zenith Optimedia.
Nielsen had planned eventually to integrate the out-of-home ratings with its standard at-home ratings, and has said that measuring out-of-home viewing is a critical component of its Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement (A2/M2) strategy. The partners have not ruled out restarting the service sometime in the future, and Nielsen says it will 'continue to work on out-of-home measurement solutions, including efforts with IMMI'.
The service used a panel of 500 participants in each of six local markets (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Denver) plus 1,700 national panelists. Panel members carried a mobile phone designed to detect and record what was on TV screens wherever they went, with results analysed and compared with a database by Nielsen.
The first results were published only in September, almost eighteen months after the service was announced. The last report is that measuring data through Nov. 9.
Web sites: www.immi.com and www.nielsenmedia.com .
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