Arbitron and WPP/GroupM Sign Multi-Year Agreement for Portable People Meter™ and Diary Radio Rating Services in all Markets

NEW YORK, June 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) today announced that WPP/GroupM has signed a multi-year contract for Arbitron's Portable People Meter™ and Diary radio ratings services across all markets.

"Our clients need high quality measurement tools to guide their media buying strategies and help track the return on their investments," said Lyle Schwartz, GroupM, Managing Partner, Director of Implementation Research & Marketplace Analysis. "Arbitron's quality research and insights help us make our decisions with confidence."

"We are thrilled to announce this agreement with GroupM, a leader in global media investment," said Lung Huang, Advertiser Agency Services, Arbitron Inc. "With the Arbitron ratings services, GroupM can now support its clients' needs with improved audience intelligence."

Arbitron's Portable People Meter and Diary radio rating services provide insights to broadcasters, advertisers and advertising agencies on consumer exposure to radio. Arbitron provides syndicated services and custom studies of qualitative consumer and media usage information for broadcast, cable and satellite television; terrestrial, satellite and online radio as well as cinema advertising and many types of place-based digital media.

About GroupM

GroupM is the leading global media investment management operation. It serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, and Mindshare.  Our primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP's media communications agencies on behalf of our clients, our shareholders and our people by operating as a parent and collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and other business-critical capabilities. The agencies that comprise GroupM are all global operations in their own right with leading market positions. The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to benefit trading, innovation, and new communication services, to bring competitive advantage to our clients and our companies.

About Arbitron

Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) is a media and marketing research firm serving the media - radio, television, cable, online radio and out-of-home - as well as advertisers and advertising agencies. Arbitron's core businesses are measuring network and local market radio audiences across the United States; surveying the retail, media and product patterns of local market consumers; and providing application software used for analyzing media audience and marketing information data. The company has developed the Portable People Meter device, a new technology for media and marketing research.

Portable People Meter™ and PPM™ are marks of Arbitron Inc.

PPM ratings are based on audience estimates and are the opinion of Arbitron and should not be relied on for precise accuracy or precise representativeness of a demographic or radio market.

Arbitron Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this release that are not strictly historical, including the statements regarding expectations for 2010 and any other statements regarding events or developments that we believe or anticipate will or may occur in the future, may be "forward-looking" statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those suggested or indicated by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, among other things, the current global economic recession and the upheaval in the credit markets and financial services industry, competition, our ability to develop and successfully market new products and technologies, our ability to successfully commercialize our Portable People Meter™ service, the growth rates and cyclicality of markets we serve, our ability to expand our business in new markets, our ability to successfully identify, consummate and integrate appropriate acquisitions, the impact of increased costs of data collection including a trend toward increasing incidence of cell phone-only households, litigation and other contingent liabilities including intellectual property matters, our compliance with applicable laws and regulations and changes in applicable laws and regulations, our ability to achieve projected efficiencies, cost reductions, sales growth and earnings, and international economic, political, legal and business factors. Additional information regarding the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements is available in our SEC filings, including our 2009 Annual Report on Form 10-K. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release and the Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

SOURCE Arbitron Inc.