PEPSICO NAMED AS PROJECT APOLLO PARTICIPANT
JOINS P&G, UNILEVER, SC JOHNSON, PFIZER AND KRAFT
(Posting Date: March 2006)

PepsiCo is the sixth, anonymous, advertiser to sign a deal funding Arbitron's and VNU's Project Apollo research venture. That apparently is more dry ink than exists between the two research giants, which have yet to finalize a joint venture agreement, even as they deploy the ambitious single-source measurement initiative and push national marketers to get on board. A senior executive involved in the venture says Arbitron and VNU are expected to finalize a deal soon, but are technically operating only on an "agreement in principle." But that hasn't stopped them from behaving like partners, jointly marketing the initiative to big marketers, and deploying a test market of the service, which is now active in 5,000 households with 11,000 individual respondents. News of PepsiCo's involvement was disclosed by executives this week during a meeting in New York updating stakeholders and pitching media companies to encode their programs and commercials so that Arbitron's portable people meters can detect them for the duration of the test.

The test will begin reporting data in May or June, and will continue to be active through December, Howard Shimmel, senior vice president-client insights at Nielsen Media Research, said Wednesday during the Association of National Advertisers Television Advertising Forum in New York.

"Basically, it's up and running," Shimmel said, adding that, "In December, we have to have the dialogue with the industry," meaning Arbitron and VNU would need to assess the level of support required to roll Apollo out as a full, syndicated research service.

The participation of PepsiCo, meanwhile represents another intriguing development for Apollo, which has been supported aggressively by Procter & Gamble, and also includes Unilever, SC Johnson, Pfizer and Kraft as supporters.

Those marketers presumably will be getting detailed insights from the market trial that would give them a competitive advantage over outside observers in terms of the relationship between media usage and consumer behavior.

Source: Mediapost Media Daily News, 3/23/06

UNILEVER SIGNS ON FOR APOLLO PILOT TEST
(Posting Date: January 2006)

Unilever - which spends approximately 600 million dollars for advertising on measured media - has become the third advertiser to announce its participation in the pilot panel of 'Project Apollo.' Three additional advertisers, who have not yet publicly announced their participation, are also on board. These six advertisers, along with their advertising agencies, are members of the Project Apollo Steering Committee. In the aggregate, the six advertisers spend more than $6.2 billion for advertising on measured media

"Maximizing the value of our investments is critical to Unilever, and we anticipate that Project Apollo will help us better understand the complex dynamics of consumer behavior," said Noreen Simmons, director/Strategic Media Planning, Unilever U.S. "We believe a deeper understanding of how our consumers are impacted by our media and marketing activities will enable us to build more effective communication plans."

SC JOHNSON SIGNS ON AS PROJECT APOLLO CLIENT
(Posting Date: October 2005)

SC Johnson has become the second client for Project Apollo, joining Procter & Gamble. The pilot panel, as previously announced, will run from December 2005 through June 2006. In early October, VNU and Arbitron announced that the price to sponsor the test had been dropped from $1 million to $350,000. After the pilot, based on industry acceptance, VNU and Arbitron will determine whether to move ahead with a full launch of a 30,000 household panel.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON PROJECT APOLLO
(Posting Date: August 2005)

Project Apollo is a marketing information product being tested and developed by VNU and Arbitron in collaboration with Procter & Gamble. Project Apollo will bring together three types of data from a single panel of consumers:

• multi-media ad exposure (Initially, it is expected that PPM technology will capture exposure to broadcast and cable networks, network radio, commercials, in-store media, and streaming media. At this time, no non-network media exposure will be included in Project Apollo),
• brand recognition and preference,
• actual purchase behavior.

In publicizing Project Apollo, Arbitron and VNU note that the granularity of the data they plan to collect and report will give marketers the ability to directly link media information to purchase behavior and intent, and will help address the issues of media weight and allocation. They note that the industry standard mix for marketing expenditure allocation is 28.5% on consumer promotion, 17.5% on advertising and 54% on trade marketing and promotion, and they question whether these percentages are effective.

Initially, the ambitious plan for Project Apollo included a multi-media panel of 30,000 households (70,000 persons) to provide electronic media data use (via Arbitron's PPM), print readership surveys, and specialty surveys measuring purchase behavior and attitudes; a 15,000 household (34,500 person) subset of the multi-media panel would use the ACNielsen Homescan technology to track package goods purchases; and additional syndicated and on-line surveys would be used to gather purchase behavior and attitudes toward products and services beyond packaged goods.

In May of 2005, Arbitron and VNU announced scaled back plans, possibly due to the lack of project sponsors beyond Procter & Gamble, the only marketer to ante up the reported seven-figure price of admission. The companies now plan to launch a pilot panel of 6,250 households, and will run a pilot test from December 2005 through June 2006. Advertisers who subscribe to the pilot test will have access to the data, and decisions as to whether to launch Project Apollo as a full service product will be made in late 2006 or early 2007.

E-mail Susan Cuccinello with any questions.