Arbitron is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio audiences. It was founded as American Research Bureau (ARB) by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with L.A. based Coffin, Cooper and Clay in the early 1950s. The company's initial business was the collection of television broadcast ratings.
The company changed its name to Arbitron in the mid 1960s, the namesake of the Arbitron System - a centralized statistical computer with leased lines to viewers' homes to monitor their activity. Deployed in New York, it gave instant ratings data on what people were watching. A reporting board would light up to indicate what home was listening to what broadcast.
Arbitron Inc. (Arbitron) is a media and marketing information services company primarily serving radio, advertising agencies, cable and broadcast television, advertisers, retailers, out-of-home media and online media. Through its Scarborough Research joint venture with The Nielsen Company (Nielsen), the Company serves broadcast television and print media. It provides four main services: measuring and estimating radio audiences in local markets in the United States; measuring and estimating radio audiences of network radio programs and commercials; providing software used for accessing and analyzing Arbitron’s media audience and marketing information data, and providing consumer, shopping and media usage information services. In addition to its core radio ratings services, the Company provides qualitative measures of consumer demographics, retail behavior and media consumption in local markets throughout the United States. It provides custom research services to companies that are seeking to demonstrate the value of their advertising propositions.
Radio Audience Measurement Services
The Company has developed an electronic Portable People Meter (PPM) service of audience measurement for commercialization in the United States and has licensed its PPM technology to a number of international media information services companies to use in their media audience measurement services in specific countries outside of the United States. In its PPM service, the Company gathers data regarding exposure to encoded audio material using its PPM devices. It randomly recruits a sample panel of households to participate in the service (all persons aged six and older in the household). The household members are asked to participate in the panel for a period of up to two years, carrying their meters throughout their day. Panelists earn points based on their compliance with the task of carrying the meter. Longer carry time results in greater points, which are the basis for monthly cash incentives the Company pays to its panel participants.
The PPM device collects the codes and adds a date/time stamp to each listening occasion. At the end of each day, panelists place their meters in a docking station and the information is downloaded to Arbitron for processing, tabulation and analysis in producing its listening estimates. The Company issues a ratings report in each measured market for 13 four-week measurement periods per year. It also issues interim weekly reports to station subscribers for programming information. Users access the Company’s ratings estimates through an Internet-based software system provided by the Company. As of December 31, 2009, the Company utilized its PPM ratings service to produce radio audience estimates in 33 United States local markets. During the year ended December 31, 2009, the Company commercialized the PPM ratings service in 18 local markets.
Arbitron uses listener diaries to gather radio listening data from a random sample group of persons aged 12 and over in households in the 267 United States local markets, in which it provides Diary-based radio ratings. Participants in Arbitron surveys are selected at random, and the Company contacts them by telephone to solicit their agreement to participate in the survey. When participants in its Diary survey (whom it refers to as diarykeepers) agree to take part in a survey, the Company mails them a small, pocket-sized diary and asks them to record their listening in the diary over the course of a seven-day period. It asks diarykeepers to report in their diary the stations to which they listened, when they listened, and where they listened, such as home, car, work, or other place. Each diarykeeper receives a diary, instructions for filling it out and a small cash incentive. In addition to the cash incentives included with the diaries, further cash incentives are used at other points in the survey process along with other communications, such as follow-up letters and phone calls to maximize response rates. Diarykeepers mail the diaries to the Company’s operations center, where it conducts a series of quality control checks, enters the information into its database and produces periodic audience listening estimates. As of December 31, 2009, it received and processed more than 1.1 million diaries every year to produce its audience listening estimates. The Company measures each of its local markets at least twice each year, and major markets four times per year.
During 2009, Arbitron formed a cross-platform media measurement group that uses the PPM technology and domestic and international partnerships. The focus of this group is to bridge the measurement gap among television, radio, Internet, mobile and place-based media. On June 23, 2009, the Company announced the creation of ARB-TV, a suite of audience measurement services designed to improve visibility into away-from-home television audiences for media companies and advertisers. In October 2009, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. signed an agreement to use the ARB-TV measurement services to help quantify its out-of-home audiences. On December 4, 2009, the Company announced that, together with online marketing research and analytics companies comScore, Inc. and Omniture, the Company is collaborating with NBC Sports, a division of NBC Universal, Inc. to provide cross-platform audience measurement services for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
The Company has entered into arrangements with media information services companies, pursuant to which those companies use its PPM technology in their audience measurement services in specific countries outside of the United States. It has arrangements with Kantar Media, which is owned by WPP Group plc, a global communications services group. Generally, under these arrangements the Company sells PPM hardware and equipment to the company for use in its media measurement services and collects a royalty once the service is deemed commercial. As of December 31, 2009, its PPM technology is being used for media measurement in seven countries, including five that have adopted PPM technology for measuring both television and radio. It has formed a wholly owned subsidiary in India, whose functions include oversight of software and technology development in India.
Radio Market Report and Other Data Services
The Company provides its listening estimates in a number of different reports that it publishes and licenses to its customers. The cornerstone of its radio audience measurement services is the Radio Market Report, which is available in all local markets, for which the Company provides radio ratings. The Radio Market Report provides audience estimates for those stations in a market that meet its minimum reporting standards. The estimates cover a variety of demographics and dayparts, which are the time periods for which the Company reports audience estimates. Each Radio Market Report contains estimates to help radio stations, advertising agencies and advertisers understand who is listening to the radio, which stations they are listening to, and where and when they are listening. Its data regarding radio audience size and demographics are generally provided to customers through multi-year license agreements.
Arbitron licenses its respondent-level database through Maximi$er, TAPSCAN and TAPSCAN Web, which are services for radio stations, and Media Professional and SmartPlus, which are services for advertising agencies and advertisers. Its respondent-level database allows radio stations, advertising agencies and advertisers to customize survey areas, dayparts, demographics and time periods to support targeted marketing strategies. The Maximi$er service includes a Windows-based application to access a market’s entire radio Diary database on a client’s personal computer. Radio stations use the Maximi$er service to produce information about their stations and programming not available in Arbitron’s published Radio Market Reports. The TAPSCAN Web service allows radio stations, advertisers and advertising agencies to access the Company’s National Regional Database (NRD) to analyze ratings information for customer-defined groupings of stations in multiple markets and counties. The Media Professional and SmartPlus services are designed to help advertising agencies and advertisers plan and buy radio advertising time. In addition, the Company offers third-party software providers and customers licenses to use its software that will enable enhanced access to its respondent-level data. In addition to the Radio Market Report, the Company provides a range of ancillary services that include Arbitrends, Radio County Coverage Reports, Hispanic Radio Data and Black Radio Data.
The Company’s RADAR service provides a measurement of national radio audiences and the audience size of network radio programs and commercials. It provides the audience measurements for a variety of demographics and dayparts for total radio listening and for more than 56 separate radio networks. Nationwide is the Company’s national radio audience service that provides information on the size and demographic composition of radio audiences for commercial and public radio networks. It issues Nationwide twice each year. Nationwide estimates are based on a sample size of more than 450,000 Arbitron respondents for each report, covering seven days of radio listening, and are conducted over a 12-week period. In addition to its reports, the Company licenses software applications that provide its customers access to the audience estimates in its databases. These applications enable its customers to analyze and understand the information for sales, management and programming purposes.
The Company’s TAPSCAN family of software solutions is used by radio stations, advertising agencies and advertisers. It can help create illustrative charts and graphs that make complex information more useful to advertisers. Other features include pre-buy research, including frequency-based tables, cost-per-point analysis, hour-by-hour and trending, use of respondent-level data, automatic scheduling and goal tracking, instant access to station format and contact information. Its TAPSCAN Sales Management service provides software systems that help radio stations manage their advertising sales process and automate the daily tasks in a sales department. The TAPSCAN Sales Management applications combine a customer relationship management system with scheduling and research applications and with inventory/pricing management tools. Its SmartPlus service provides media buying software systems, including the SmartPlus software, to local and regional advertising agencies for broadcast and print media. Another TAPSCAN service, QUALITAP, is also made available to television and cable outlets in the United States under a licensing arrangement with Marketron International, Inc. Its PD Advantage service offers radio station program directors the ability to create a variety of reports that help analyze the market, the audience and the competition.
Local Market Consumer Information Services
In its radio ratings service, Arbitron provides primarily quantitative data, such as how many people are listening. It also provides qualitative data, such as consumer and media usage information to radio stations, cable companies, television stations, out-of-home media, magazine and newspaper publishers, advertising agencies and advertisers. The qualitative data on listeners, viewers and readers provide detailed socioeconomic information and information on what survey participants buy, where they shop and what forms of media they use. It provides these measurements of consumer demographics, retail behavior and media usage in local markets throughout the United States. The Company provides qualitative services tailored to fit a customer’s specific market size and marketing requirements, such as the Scarborough Report, which is offered in larger markets; the RetailDirect Service, which is offered in medium markets, and the Qualitative Diary Service/LocalMotion Service, which is offered in smaller markets. It also provides training and support services that help its customers understand and use the local market consumer information provided by the Company.
The Scarborough service is provided through a joint venture between Arbitron and a subsidiary of Nielsen. The Scarborough service provides detailed information about media usage, retail and shopping habits, demographics and lifestyles in 81 large United States local markets, utilizing a sample of consumers in the relevant markets. Scarborough data feature more than 2,000 media, retail and lifestyle characteristics, which can help radio stations, television stations, cable companies, advertising agencies and advertisers, newspaper and magazine publishers and out-of-home media companies develop a profile of their consumers. This information is provided twice each year to newspapers, radio and television broadcasters, cable companies, out-of-home media, advertising agencies and advertisers in the form of the Scarborough Report. Scarborough also provides a Mid-Tier Local Market Consumer Study regarding media usage, retail and shopping habits, demographics and lifestyles of adult consumers in 38 United States local markets.
The Company’s RetailDirect service is a locally oriented, purchase data and media usage research service provided in 19 midsized United States local markets. This service, which utilizes diaries and telephone surveys, provides a profile of the audience in terms of local media, retail and consumer preferences so that local radio and television broadcasters, out-of-home media and cable companies have information to help them develop targeted sales and programming strategies. Retail categories include automotive, audio video, furniture and appliances, soft drinks and beer, fast food, department stores, grocery stores, banks and hospitals. Media usage categories include local radio, broadcast television, cable networks, out-of-home media, newspapers, yellow pages and advertising circulars.
Arbitron’s Qualitative Diary Service collects consumer and media usage information from Arbitron radio diarykeepers in 176 smaller United States local markets. The same persons who report their radio listenership in the market also answer 27 demographic, product and service questions. It collects consumer behavior information for key local market retail categories, such as automotive sales, grocery, fast food, furniture and bedding stores, beer, soft drinks and banking. The Qualitative Diary Service also collects information about other media, such as television news viewership, cable television viewership, out-of-home media exposure and newspaper readership. This qualitative service provided for cable television companies is known as LocalMotion. Its custom research services serve companies that are seeking to demonstrate the value of their advertising propositions. It has provided custom research services for subscribers, including sports play-by-play broadcasters, digital out-of-home and place-based media companies, and radio station properties. Through its custom research services, the Company is also exploring additional applications of PPM data, including non-ratings programming, marketing and out-of-home services for broadcast television and cable television. It is also exploring providing services for mobile media and companies that sell advertising on in-store (retail) media and sports arenas.
The Company competes with Eastlan Resources, Donovan Data Systems, Interactive Media Systems, Marketron Inc., STRATA Marketing Inc., Telmar Information Services Corp., International Demographics, Inc., GfK AG, Experian Marketing Solutions, Nielsen, Rentrak Corporation, Canoe Ventures, TiVo, Kantar Media and TRA Global, Inc.
Principal Subsidiaries: Tapscan WorldWide; Continental Research (U.K.).
Principal Competitors: ACNielsen Corporation; Strategic Radio Research Inc.; MeasureCast Inc.; Information Resources Inc.
OVERALL
Beta: 1.56
Market Cap (Mil.): $1,049.27
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 27.13
Annual Dividend: 0.40
Yield (%): 1.03
FINANCIALS
ARB Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 22.51 7.84 9.39
EPS (TTM): 5.68 -- --
ROI: 33.35 3.42 0.84
ROE: 68.07 3.63 1.53
Key Dates:
1949: The company is founded by Jim Seiler as American Research Bureau; it eventually is renamed The Arbitron Company.
1960: Arbitron becomes subsidiary of Control Data Corporation.
1992: Control Data splits into two companies, one of which, Ceridian Corporation, becomes Arbitron's parent.
2000: Ceridian announces plans to spin off Arbitron as a publicly traded company in early 2001.
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1949 as American Research Bureau
Employees: 530
Sales: $215 million (1999)
NAIC: 541910 Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling
Name Age Since Current Position
Guarascio, Philip 69 2010 Chairman of the Board
Kerr, William 69 2010 President, Chief Executive Officer, Director
Surratt, Richard 50 2011 Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President - Finance
Henry, Scott 49 2005 Executive Vice President - Technology Solutions, Chief Information Officer
Smith, Timothy 47 2010 Executive Vice President - Business Development and Strategy, Chief Legal Officer, Secretary
Hanley, Carol 44 2010 Executive Vice President - Chief Sales and Marketing
Creamer, Sean 46 2011 Executive Vice President - U.S. Media Services
Smith, Steven 50 2008 Executive Vice President - Survey Operations
Legge, Marilou 57 2010 Executive Vice President - Organization Effectiveness and Corporate Communications
Lindner, Gregg 54 2010 Chief Research Officer, Executive Vice President - Service Innovation
Farber, Erica 58 2010 Independent Director
Kittelberger, Larry 62 2001 Independent Director
Nogales, Luis 67 2001 Independent Director
Post, Richard 52 2011 Independent Director
Archambeau, Shellye 48 2005 Independent Director
Devonshire, David 65 2007 Independent Director
Dimling, John 73 2010 Independent Director
Address:
142 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019-3300
U.S.A.
The company changed its name to Arbitron in the mid 1960s, the namesake of the Arbitron System - a centralized statistical computer with leased lines to viewers' homes to monitor their activity. Deployed in New York, it gave instant ratings data on what people were watching. A reporting board would light up to indicate what home was listening to what broadcast.
Arbitron Inc. (Arbitron) is a media and marketing information services company primarily serving radio, advertising agencies, cable and broadcast television, advertisers, retailers, out-of-home media and online media. Through its Scarborough Research joint venture with The Nielsen Company (Nielsen), the Company serves broadcast television and print media. It provides four main services: measuring and estimating radio audiences in local markets in the United States; measuring and estimating radio audiences of network radio programs and commercials; providing software used for accessing and analyzing Arbitron’s media audience and marketing information data, and providing consumer, shopping and media usage information services. In addition to its core radio ratings services, the Company provides qualitative measures of consumer demographics, retail behavior and media consumption in local markets throughout the United States. It provides custom research services to companies that are seeking to demonstrate the value of their advertising propositions.
Radio Audience Measurement Services
The Company has developed an electronic Portable People Meter (PPM) service of audience measurement for commercialization in the United States and has licensed its PPM technology to a number of international media information services companies to use in their media audience measurement services in specific countries outside of the United States. In its PPM service, the Company gathers data regarding exposure to encoded audio material using its PPM devices. It randomly recruits a sample panel of households to participate in the service (all persons aged six and older in the household). The household members are asked to participate in the panel for a period of up to two years, carrying their meters throughout their day. Panelists earn points based on their compliance with the task of carrying the meter. Longer carry time results in greater points, which are the basis for monthly cash incentives the Company pays to its panel participants.
The PPM device collects the codes and adds a date/time stamp to each listening occasion. At the end of each day, panelists place their meters in a docking station and the information is downloaded to Arbitron for processing, tabulation and analysis in producing its listening estimates. The Company issues a ratings report in each measured market for 13 four-week measurement periods per year. It also issues interim weekly reports to station subscribers for programming information. Users access the Company’s ratings estimates through an Internet-based software system provided by the Company. As of December 31, 2009, the Company utilized its PPM ratings service to produce radio audience estimates in 33 United States local markets. During the year ended December 31, 2009, the Company commercialized the PPM ratings service in 18 local markets.
Arbitron uses listener diaries to gather radio listening data from a random sample group of persons aged 12 and over in households in the 267 United States local markets, in which it provides Diary-based radio ratings. Participants in Arbitron surveys are selected at random, and the Company contacts them by telephone to solicit their agreement to participate in the survey. When participants in its Diary survey (whom it refers to as diarykeepers) agree to take part in a survey, the Company mails them a small, pocket-sized diary and asks them to record their listening in the diary over the course of a seven-day period. It asks diarykeepers to report in their diary the stations to which they listened, when they listened, and where they listened, such as home, car, work, or other place. Each diarykeeper receives a diary, instructions for filling it out and a small cash incentive. In addition to the cash incentives included with the diaries, further cash incentives are used at other points in the survey process along with other communications, such as follow-up letters and phone calls to maximize response rates. Diarykeepers mail the diaries to the Company’s operations center, where it conducts a series of quality control checks, enters the information into its database and produces periodic audience listening estimates. As of December 31, 2009, it received and processed more than 1.1 million diaries every year to produce its audience listening estimates. The Company measures each of its local markets at least twice each year, and major markets four times per year.
During 2009, Arbitron formed a cross-platform media measurement group that uses the PPM technology and domestic and international partnerships. The focus of this group is to bridge the measurement gap among television, radio, Internet, mobile and place-based media. On June 23, 2009, the Company announced the creation of ARB-TV, a suite of audience measurement services designed to improve visibility into away-from-home television audiences for media companies and advertisers. In October 2009, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. signed an agreement to use the ARB-TV measurement services to help quantify its out-of-home audiences. On December 4, 2009, the Company announced that, together with online marketing research and analytics companies comScore, Inc. and Omniture, the Company is collaborating with NBC Sports, a division of NBC Universal, Inc. to provide cross-platform audience measurement services for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
The Company has entered into arrangements with media information services companies, pursuant to which those companies use its PPM technology in their audience measurement services in specific countries outside of the United States. It has arrangements with Kantar Media, which is owned by WPP Group plc, a global communications services group. Generally, under these arrangements the Company sells PPM hardware and equipment to the company for use in its media measurement services and collects a royalty once the service is deemed commercial. As of December 31, 2009, its PPM technology is being used for media measurement in seven countries, including five that have adopted PPM technology for measuring both television and radio. It has formed a wholly owned subsidiary in India, whose functions include oversight of software and technology development in India.
Radio Market Report and Other Data Services
The Company provides its listening estimates in a number of different reports that it publishes and licenses to its customers. The cornerstone of its radio audience measurement services is the Radio Market Report, which is available in all local markets, for which the Company provides radio ratings. The Radio Market Report provides audience estimates for those stations in a market that meet its minimum reporting standards. The estimates cover a variety of demographics and dayparts, which are the time periods for which the Company reports audience estimates. Each Radio Market Report contains estimates to help radio stations, advertising agencies and advertisers understand who is listening to the radio, which stations they are listening to, and where and when they are listening. Its data regarding radio audience size and demographics are generally provided to customers through multi-year license agreements.
Arbitron licenses its respondent-level database through Maximi$er, TAPSCAN and TAPSCAN Web, which are services for radio stations, and Media Professional and SmartPlus, which are services for advertising agencies and advertisers. Its respondent-level database allows radio stations, advertising agencies and advertisers to customize survey areas, dayparts, demographics and time periods to support targeted marketing strategies. The Maximi$er service includes a Windows-based application to access a market’s entire radio Diary database on a client’s personal computer. Radio stations use the Maximi$er service to produce information about their stations and programming not available in Arbitron’s published Radio Market Reports. The TAPSCAN Web service allows radio stations, advertisers and advertising agencies to access the Company’s National Regional Database (NRD) to analyze ratings information for customer-defined groupings of stations in multiple markets and counties. The Media Professional and SmartPlus services are designed to help advertising agencies and advertisers plan and buy radio advertising time. In addition, the Company offers third-party software providers and customers licenses to use its software that will enable enhanced access to its respondent-level data. In addition to the Radio Market Report, the Company provides a range of ancillary services that include Arbitrends, Radio County Coverage Reports, Hispanic Radio Data and Black Radio Data.
The Company’s RADAR service provides a measurement of national radio audiences and the audience size of network radio programs and commercials. It provides the audience measurements for a variety of demographics and dayparts for total radio listening and for more than 56 separate radio networks. Nationwide is the Company’s national radio audience service that provides information on the size and demographic composition of radio audiences for commercial and public radio networks. It issues Nationwide twice each year. Nationwide estimates are based on a sample size of more than 450,000 Arbitron respondents for each report, covering seven days of radio listening, and are conducted over a 12-week period. In addition to its reports, the Company licenses software applications that provide its customers access to the audience estimates in its databases. These applications enable its customers to analyze and understand the information for sales, management and programming purposes.
The Company’s TAPSCAN family of software solutions is used by radio stations, advertising agencies and advertisers. It can help create illustrative charts and graphs that make complex information more useful to advertisers. Other features include pre-buy research, including frequency-based tables, cost-per-point analysis, hour-by-hour and trending, use of respondent-level data, automatic scheduling and goal tracking, instant access to station format and contact information. Its TAPSCAN Sales Management service provides software systems that help radio stations manage their advertising sales process and automate the daily tasks in a sales department. The TAPSCAN Sales Management applications combine a customer relationship management system with scheduling and research applications and with inventory/pricing management tools. Its SmartPlus service provides media buying software systems, including the SmartPlus software, to local and regional advertising agencies for broadcast and print media. Another TAPSCAN service, QUALITAP, is also made available to television and cable outlets in the United States under a licensing arrangement with Marketron International, Inc. Its PD Advantage service offers radio station program directors the ability to create a variety of reports that help analyze the market, the audience and the competition.
Local Market Consumer Information Services
In its radio ratings service, Arbitron provides primarily quantitative data, such as how many people are listening. It also provides qualitative data, such as consumer and media usage information to radio stations, cable companies, television stations, out-of-home media, magazine and newspaper publishers, advertising agencies and advertisers. The qualitative data on listeners, viewers and readers provide detailed socioeconomic information and information on what survey participants buy, where they shop and what forms of media they use. It provides these measurements of consumer demographics, retail behavior and media usage in local markets throughout the United States. The Company provides qualitative services tailored to fit a customer’s specific market size and marketing requirements, such as the Scarborough Report, which is offered in larger markets; the RetailDirect Service, which is offered in medium markets, and the Qualitative Diary Service/LocalMotion Service, which is offered in smaller markets. It also provides training and support services that help its customers understand and use the local market consumer information provided by the Company.
The Scarborough service is provided through a joint venture between Arbitron and a subsidiary of Nielsen. The Scarborough service provides detailed information about media usage, retail and shopping habits, demographics and lifestyles in 81 large United States local markets, utilizing a sample of consumers in the relevant markets. Scarborough data feature more than 2,000 media, retail and lifestyle characteristics, which can help radio stations, television stations, cable companies, advertising agencies and advertisers, newspaper and magazine publishers and out-of-home media companies develop a profile of their consumers. This information is provided twice each year to newspapers, radio and television broadcasters, cable companies, out-of-home media, advertising agencies and advertisers in the form of the Scarborough Report. Scarborough also provides a Mid-Tier Local Market Consumer Study regarding media usage, retail and shopping habits, demographics and lifestyles of adult consumers in 38 United States local markets.
The Company’s RetailDirect service is a locally oriented, purchase data and media usage research service provided in 19 midsized United States local markets. This service, which utilizes diaries and telephone surveys, provides a profile of the audience in terms of local media, retail and consumer preferences so that local radio and television broadcasters, out-of-home media and cable companies have information to help them develop targeted sales and programming strategies. Retail categories include automotive, audio video, furniture and appliances, soft drinks and beer, fast food, department stores, grocery stores, banks and hospitals. Media usage categories include local radio, broadcast television, cable networks, out-of-home media, newspapers, yellow pages and advertising circulars.
Arbitron’s Qualitative Diary Service collects consumer and media usage information from Arbitron radio diarykeepers in 176 smaller United States local markets. The same persons who report their radio listenership in the market also answer 27 demographic, product and service questions. It collects consumer behavior information for key local market retail categories, such as automotive sales, grocery, fast food, furniture and bedding stores, beer, soft drinks and banking. The Qualitative Diary Service also collects information about other media, such as television news viewership, cable television viewership, out-of-home media exposure and newspaper readership. This qualitative service provided for cable television companies is known as LocalMotion. Its custom research services serve companies that are seeking to demonstrate the value of their advertising propositions. It has provided custom research services for subscribers, including sports play-by-play broadcasters, digital out-of-home and place-based media companies, and radio station properties. Through its custom research services, the Company is also exploring additional applications of PPM data, including non-ratings programming, marketing and out-of-home services for broadcast television and cable television. It is also exploring providing services for mobile media and companies that sell advertising on in-store (retail) media and sports arenas.
The Company competes with Eastlan Resources, Donovan Data Systems, Interactive Media Systems, Marketron Inc., STRATA Marketing Inc., Telmar Information Services Corp., International Demographics, Inc., GfK AG, Experian Marketing Solutions, Nielsen, Rentrak Corporation, Canoe Ventures, TiVo, Kantar Media and TRA Global, Inc.
Principal Subsidiaries: Tapscan WorldWide; Continental Research (U.K.).
Principal Competitors: ACNielsen Corporation; Strategic Radio Research Inc.; MeasureCast Inc.; Information Resources Inc.
OVERALL
Beta: 1.56
Market Cap (Mil.): $1,049.27
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 27.13
Annual Dividend: 0.40
Yield (%): 1.03
FINANCIALS
ARB Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 22.51 7.84 9.39
EPS (TTM): 5.68 -- --
ROI: 33.35 3.42 0.84
ROE: 68.07 3.63 1.53
Key Dates:
1949: The company is founded by Jim Seiler as American Research Bureau; it eventually is renamed The Arbitron Company.
1960: Arbitron becomes subsidiary of Control Data Corporation.
1992: Control Data splits into two companies, one of which, Ceridian Corporation, becomes Arbitron's parent.
2000: Ceridian announces plans to spin off Arbitron as a publicly traded company in early 2001.
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1949 as American Research Bureau
Employees: 530
Sales: $215 million (1999)
NAIC: 541910 Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling
Name Age Since Current Position
Guarascio, Philip 69 2010 Chairman of the Board
Kerr, William 69 2010 President, Chief Executive Officer, Director
Surratt, Richard 50 2011 Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President - Finance
Henry, Scott 49 2005 Executive Vice President - Technology Solutions, Chief Information Officer
Smith, Timothy 47 2010 Executive Vice President - Business Development and Strategy, Chief Legal Officer, Secretary
Hanley, Carol 44 2010 Executive Vice President - Chief Sales and Marketing
Creamer, Sean 46 2011 Executive Vice President - U.S. Media Services
Smith, Steven 50 2008 Executive Vice President - Survey Operations
Legge, Marilou 57 2010 Executive Vice President - Organization Effectiveness and Corporate Communications
Lindner, Gregg 54 2010 Chief Research Officer, Executive Vice President - Service Innovation
Farber, Erica 58 2010 Independent Director
Kittelberger, Larry 62 2001 Independent Director
Nogales, Luis 67 2001 Independent Director
Post, Richard 52 2011 Independent Director
Archambeau, Shellye 48 2005 Independent Director
Devonshire, David 65 2007 Independent Director
Dimling, John 73 2010 Independent Director
Address:
142 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019-3300
U.S.A.