AGB Nielsen Media Research China was invited to participate in a "China TAM Media Forum" organised by GroupM on 22nd Nov 2006. The forum brought together senior GroupM management, key advertisers, media planners and media research companies. The aim was to provide the participants with an opportunity to meet and exchange ideas on the trends, challenges and opportunities within the Chinese TAM environment.

AGB Nielsen Media Research shared with participants the strategy that they are already implementing to ensure that they can offer China a superior TAM service; based on the total Chinese population and by utilising state of the art TAM technologies. Dr Alberto Colussi, Chairman of the AGB Nielsen Media Research Management Board commented "it is a constructive way to address the problem (the fact that there are two competing services) and this gives each supplier the opportunity to explain to clients how they are operating so that they can make up their minds as to who is offering them the better service". Brillian Zhou, the Media Director from YUM further commented that given the rapid economic and technological changes in China "the most important thing is that it is not just conceptual plans but that they are also actually being implemented".

Clients were able to understand the benefits of the new AGB Nielsen Media Research service based on data collected from the 7 provinces which had already been completed. Dr Colussi commented that "although we are only half way, we can already demonstrate that there is more purchasing power in the non-urban areas than in the urban areas and if the TAM service continues to measure only the big cities, this will lead to ratecards going up due to an excess of demand. However, if you are able to distribute your investment across an urban and non-urban population, not only do you gain a flexibility that was previously missing (based on a city-only measurement service) but the potential of other media, such as the provincial channels now become evident and can be more effectively incorporated into the advertising plans."

Live demonstrations of UNITAM, the TV Events Suite and Arianna provided participants also with a far more 'hand on' understanding of AGB Nielsen Media Research's proprietary system and how it can guarantee a high level of accuracy and data reliability, even in a complex and dynamic TAM environment such as China is presenting.

AGB Nielsen Media Research Philippines formally launched the country's first nationwide urban television audience measurement service (NUTAM) on 26th Oct 2006. NUTAM is an expansion of the current AGB Nielsen Media Research Metro Manila panel and provides clients with overnight data collected from households in all the 6 major urban cities across the country. The NUTAM service is based on a 1,500 HH panel, representing a universe of 7,260,728 national urban TV homes. The 6 major urban cities include North and Central Luzon (300 panel HHs), Metro Manila (400 HHs), South Luzon (300 HHs), Visayas (300 HHs) and Mindanao (200 HHs). The NUTAM service was well received by the launch attendees, who included top executives from media agencies and 2 major broadcasters.

AGB Nielsen Media Research also took this opportunity to launch its Metropolitan cities (MCTAM) TV ratings service and to make the industry aware that they were re-branding their current Mega manila panel to MegaTAM. The MCTAM service, based on a 350 household panel representing a universe of 589,408 TV households, covers the key metropolitan cities in the urban regions which are considered as the important economic centres within the Philippines. These centres include Metro Cebu (150 panel HHs); Iloilo (100 HHs) and Metro Davao (100 HHs).

Conversion from off-line to on-line service was completed by end 4Q06 in both Thailand and the
6 Chinese market cities. In Thailand this conversion saw the nationwide upgrade to an on-line service with all data now being polled on a daily basis. In China, this conversion from weekly off-line to overnight on-line began on 1st Nov 2006 and saw the conversion of 1,860 households (310 HHs per city market) in the 6 market cities of Chengdu, Chungqing, Shenyang, Tianjin, Wuhan and Fuzhou.

AGB Nielsen Media Research Croatia has successfully implemented the global "Disaster Recovery Site" service during Dec 2006. The DRS offers the companies within AGB Nielsen Media Research with the security of knowing that in the case of 'force majeur' they can re-establish the critical TAM operations from remote, within the shortest possible time and a minimal loss of data.

Panel expansion from 2,200 to 2,500 HHs is currently underway in Turkey, where AGB Nielsen Media Research expects to have completed the installations by the end of the 2Q2007.

Road to Success: Arianna in Indonesia - the importance of teamwork

The successful implementation of Arianna, the AGB Nielsen Media Research data analysis software, in the Indonesian market clearly demonstrates how important teamwork is when it comes to facing the various challenges involved in completely replacing a TAM software analysis system that local Users have come to rely on over many years.

The project, involving the local Indonesian client services team, the local clients and the Arianna support teams based both in Kuala Lumpur and in Lugano, was completed on time with a high level of client satisfaction being expressed.

The process, which began in late 2005, involved mass client trials on various Arianna software versions and was completed at the end of 1H06 when the old Telescope software was finally 'switched off'. A total of 90 training sessions were conducted over this period, involving 717 media practioners and 53 client companies. The starting point was training the trainers, a task made easier by the constant involvement of Arianna's global support team.

The AGB Nielsen Media Research Indonesia client service team demonstrated tremendous commitment to the task and worked tirelessly with clients to train and involve them in the program. An important aspect of the introduction was the formation of a TV Working Group of clients who provided important feedback and suggestions for the final version.

Arianna provides much greater functionality than the old Telescope system with new features such as TeleGrid, TeleGraph and DailyGrid and the recently released premium modules such as Forecasting and Planning & Optimizing. Clients have also indicated that the much better calculation performances and flexibility in the reporting layout are other benefits of changing over to Arianna.

"This is an important milestone for the successful rollout of Arianna in the Asia Pacific region" said Niccolo Colussi, Managing Director of the Corporate Arianna Software Division. "The experience gained in Indonesia, has highlighted the importance of committed teamwork from all involved. I would like to thank Irawati's team for their very positive, creative and constructive approach to this project and I am convinced that this spirit combined with the development efforts made on our end are the perfect mix for the success in making Arianna the 'analysis software of choice' in the Asia Pacific Region".

During the 1Q07, the focus of the Arianna team will be to provide Indonesian clients with a far richer appreciation of the Forecasting, Planning and Optimisation modules and to introduce further advanced features within the Viewing Behaviour and Post Evaluation Areas.