As Nielsen completes its purchase of Arbitron today, the brand name of the latter has been retired.
As of today all of the former Arbitron radio measurement services have been rebranded as “Nielsen Audio“. The first release by the newly branded company will be the September PPM monthlies later today.
The Press Release announcing the rebranding follows:
Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN), a leading global provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy, today announced that it has successfully completed its acquisition of Arbitron Inc., an international media and marketing research firm.
“This is a great day for Nielsen and a natural step in our evolution,” said Nielsen Chief Executive Officer David Calhoun. “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.”
Arbitron is being rebranded Nielsen Audio and will be integrated into Nielsen’s U.S. Watch business segment, which provides information and insights primarily to the media and advertising industries across television, online, mobile and radio. With Arbitron, Nielsen now measures eight hours a day per person of dynamic media consumption.
“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 U.S.,” said Calhoun. “Globally, this is an opportunity to expand our measurement of consumer behavior and introduce audio measurement capabilities in new markets.”
As previously disclosed, Nielsen entered into an agreement on Dec. 17, 2012 to acquire 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.
Nielsen will update its full year guidance to include the impact of the Arbitron acquisition during its Q3 2013 earnings conference call, which will be held October 23.
I’m very sad to see the Arbitron name go, as it’s been around only a year and a half less than I have. (1957, for those keeping score.)
As an industry, we’ve grown so accustomed to saying “the Arbitrons have come out” that it’s going to sound weird saying “the Nielsens have come out”. Doesn’t sound like radio to my ears.
Hey, maybe with the name change, radio salespeople can convince potential advertisers that it’s really television (but without the pictures)?