Nielsen, Catalina Marketing announce joint venture
NEW YORK One of the world’s largest providers of media and consumer information and analytics announced its joint venture with a global leader in consumer-driven print communications.
The Nielsen Co. and Catalina Marketing Corp. have formed Nielsen Catalina Ventures to create the next generation of precision media solutions and return on investment measurement tools to allow consumer packaged goods and media companies to more effectively link the marketing exposures consumers see with what products they actually buy.
The 50-50% joint venture will integrate information from Nielsen’s industry-leading TV, Internet and household purchase panels, with purchase data from more than 50 million shoppers from a cross-section of retailers in Catalina Marketing’s network.
“As consumers become more sophisticated and media platforms continue to fragment, advertisers must be able to build more precise and measurable media plans,” said David Calhoun, chairman and CEO at Nielsen. “The only way to get there is with faster, deeper information. Nielsen and Catalina’s combined capabilities provide comprehensive, scalable solutions for clients to better shape their marketing investments and measure their campaign ROI with far greater precision, speed and agility. We are pleased to partner with Catalina Marketing in this first step toward a holistic measure of ROI that will redefine accountability in the CPG space.”
Nielsen Catalina Ventures will launch its first precision media solutions in the first half of 2010. Nielsen’s existing television and online precision media businesses, which currently use Nielsen’s Homescan purchase panel to match media consumption with purchase behavior, will be integrated with Catalina Marketing’s shopper data. This will allow analyses for many more brand campaigns than is currently possible. And for the first time ever, the television offering will be based on data from Nielsen’s National People Meter panel, the industry currency, to create solutions for measuring the sales impact of TV advertising campaigns.