Arbitron Appoints Manish Bhatia as Executive Vice President, New Product Innovation

COLUMBIA, Md., Aug. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) announced today that Manish Bhatia has joined the company in the newly created position of Executive Vice President, New Product Innovation. Mr. Bhatia will report to Sean Creamer, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Arbitron.

Mr. Bhatia will direct the Arbitron cross-platform initiatives and lead the teams that are developing additional research services outside the company's core radio business.

"Throughout his 23-year career, Manish has been a leader and an innovator in the development of advanced research services for new and emerging media," said Sean Creamer, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Arbitron Inc. "He has collaborated with major media and Internet companies to develop solutions that helped these companies make informed decisions about their media strategies.

"In addition to his leadership role for the company's growth initiatives, Manish will serve as a key partner for the Radio Service Innovation team which is led by Gregg Lindner, Executive Vice President and Chief Research Officer. Gregg and Manish will both focus on ways to leverage the potential of our PPM technology and consumer panel for current and emerging customer groups," said Mr. Creamer.

Since 2010, Mr. Bhatia had been President and Chief Executive Officer for Symphony Advanced Media, a Silicon Valley-based startup serving advertisers with cross-media insights.

From 2007 until 2010, Mr. Bhatia held senior positions at The Nielsen Company focused on advanced TV, online, mobile, and social media measurement.  As President, Advanced TV Services from 2009-2010, he led efforts to leverage set-top box tuning data to create new insights into television audience behavior.

As President, Global Services and U.S. Sales for Nielsen Online, he lead the integration of the 2007 acquisition of NetRatings into the Nielsen organization and developed services to deliver integrated cross-media insights including the integration of television and online behaviors as well as online and mobile behaviors.

Prior to the 2007 acquisition of NetRatings, Mr. Bhatia served as Executive Vice President, Global Operations and U.S. Sales for the Silicon Valley-based, NASDAQ-traded Internet research firm. At NetRatings, he led the product, strategy, research, engineering, and operations functions globally and directed the sales and client service functions in the U.S.

Mr. Bhatia began his research career at Nielsen in 1989, working for Nielsen Media Research and Nielsen Interactive services.  He joined NetRatings in 2002.

Mr. Bhatia will be based in New York and will maintain an office at the Arbitron headquarters in Columbia, Maryland.

About Arbitron

Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) is an international media and marketing research firm serving the media–radio, television, cable, and out-of-home—the mobile industry, as well as advertising agencies and advertisers around the world. Arbitron businesses include: measuring network and local market radio audiences across the United States; surveying the retail, media, and product patterns of U.S. consumers; providing mobile audience measurement and analytics in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia; and developing application software used for analyzing media audience and marketing information data. The Company has developed the Portable People Meter™ (PPM^®) and the PPM 360™, new technologies for media and marketing research. For more information, log on to www.arbitron.com.

Portable People Meter™, PPM^®, and PPM 360™ are marks of Arbitron Inc.

Arbitron Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release that are not strictly historical, including the statements regarding expectations for 2012 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 2011 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.