Media Industry Leaders to Launch the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM)...

Media Industry Leaders to Launch the Coalition for Innovative Media
Measurement (CIMM) - Executive Quotes
Executives From the 14 Founding Companies Comment on the Organization

NEW YORK, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Executives from the 14 companies
representing the founding members of the Council for Innovative Media
Measurement (CIMM) today commented on the formation of the organization:

Jeff Bewkes, Chairman and CEO, Time Warner: "As we continue to make our
content available across additional and emerging platforms through initiatives
like TV Everywhere, it becomes increasingly important to measure consumer
interaction with our brands. Comprehensive and accurate measurement will have
a direct effect on the continued growth of our industry."

George Bodenheimer, President, ESPN, Inc. and ABC Sports, Co-chairman, Disney
Media Networks: "When you get down to it, we're all looking for answers to
some very similar questions. It makes sense to come together to help advance
the measurement of media across all platforms to serve our strategic needs,
while helping the industry build smarter accountability for our advertisers."

Nick Brien, President and CEO, Interpublic Group's Mediabrands: "The velocity
of today's technology developments enables us to demand a more sophisticated
measurement model that provides greater accountability and accuracy to
increase the effectiveness of our clients' media and marketing investments.
We can no longer subscribe to outdated perceptions of engagement. As we
strive for the most accurate and useful data, we must support innovation in
measurement and build new platforms to compete with our increasingly
measurable world."

Chase Carey, Deputy Chairman, President and Chief Operating Officer, News
Corporation: "At News Corp we've been calling for more accurate television
measurement for some time. We're happy to support this bold industry
initiative -- which is the first step in a major movement by media companies
and their advertising partners to explore available ways to better measure the
various platforms that support video content."

Philippe Dauman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Viacom: "Today's
audiences are consuming more media in more ways than ever before. We all have
an urgent need to evolve our methods of measurement such that advertisers and
programmers can better understand consumer behavior. CIMM's strong and
coordinated commitment to driving advances and innovation in audience
measurement will ultimately help us deliver more value to our advertising and
marketing partners."

Laura Desmond, Global CEO, Starcom MediaVest Group: "It's a new media
ecosystem, yet the industry relies on old media metrics. This simply can't
continue. Finding consistent, reliable measurement for today and future
realities, needs to be a top priority. With CIMM we look to address the
issues--from unlocking the full potential of set-top-box data to identifying
standards for assessing cross-platform performance -- head on and with vigor."

Dina Howell, Vice President, Global Media & Brand Operations, The Procter &
Gamble Company: "P&G is focused on serving more consumers more fully with our
marketing communications. We believe a system that holistically measures the
range of touchpoints across media is essential if we are to better engage our
consumers when and where they are most receptive. And, it only makes sense
that we explore and learn in this area as an industry."

Laura Klauberg, Senior Vice President, Global Media, Unilever: "Unilever is
aggressively pursuing new ways to connect our brands with consumers. The
ability to accurately measure the impact of our investments in this evolving
and fragmented media landscape is critical for informing business decisions.
To that end, we are extremely pleased to join with our industry peers in this
initiative."

Esther Lee, Senior Vice President, Brand Marketing and Advertising, AT&T:
"Connecting customers is at the heart of the AT&T brand, so having a better
understanding how our customers actually connect and respond to our
advertising -- whether it's TV, online or over their handsets -- will help us
do a better job of driving value through those media investments. That's why
we are excited to be involved with this coalition of industry leaders who are
committed to working with the best data providers and analysts to create an
effective cross-platform media metric solution."

Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP, holding company for GroupM: "Given
the recent changes in media consumption habits, it is critical for the various
constituencies of our industry to agree on the priorities for the next
generation of media measurement systems. Once we have agreed on these
priorities, we can identify the most promising opportunities and initiatives
and concentrate our future investments on the most effective systems that meet
our objectives in this new media environment."

Anne Sweeney, President, Disney/ABC Television Group, and Co-chair, Disney
Media Networks: "The digital era has empowered the viewer with choice of
content and platform. Better understanding the evolving dynamics of how the
audience connects with our content will help us reach them more effectively.
This is essential for content providers, agencies, and advertisers alike; and
working together will ensure we achieve it."

Nancy Tellem, President, CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group:
"As more professional content finds its way to multiple platforms it's
imperative that content owners receive value for viewing on these screens.
CIMM underscores the mutual need for those on the buying and selling side to
come together to establish metrics across all platforms in an accurate and
credible way. This announcement shouldn't be seen as an alternative to
Nielsen. It's quite the contrary; we expect Nielsen, along with other research
entities, to be a part of the solution."

Page Thompson, CEO, North America, Omnicom Media Group: "There is only one
constant in the media industry today -- and that is that everything is
changing. New ways of thinking and new technologies are driving this change.
As an industry, we've been quick to adapt to sharp and swift changes in how,
when, where and even why people use media. The goal of this alliance is to
ensure that we can provide a context for measurement that is more relevant and
reliable in the brave new media world that we have helped create. There is no
better time than now to harness this new thinking and technology to provide a
new measurement currency."

David Zaslav, President and CEO, Discovery Communications: "CIMM's mission is
to tackle the industry's most pressing issues -- higher levels of
accountability and cross-platform measurement -- to enable solutions that keep
pace with innovation at the consumer level which will ultimately benefit
advertisers, agencies and media companies alike.

Jeff Zucker, President and CEO, NBC Universal: "Twenty-first century media
needs 21(st) century measurement techniques. Existing systems are incapable of
accurately measuring the media habits of our audience across today's
multiplicity of platforms. CIMM is an important step in helping to address
this problem. As an industry, we can't afford not to do this, because if we
can't measure our audience accurately, we can't sell it."

About CIMM
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) was founded by several
leading television content providers, media agencies and advertisers to
promote innovation in audience measurement for television and cross-platform
media. CIMM will explore and identify new methodologies and approaches to
audience measurement through a series of pilot studies with independent
measurement companies focusing on two key areas: the current and future
potential of television measurement through set-top-box data, and new methods
for cross-platform media measurement.

Founding members and current participating companies are: AT&T; CBS
Corporation, Discovery Communications, GroupM, Interpublic Group's
Mediabrands, NBC Universal, News Corporation, Omnicom Media Group, P&G,
Starcom MediaVest Group Worldwide, Time Warner, Unilever, Viacom and The Walt
Disney Company.

SOURCE Council for Innovative Media Measurement

Joe Benarroch, Mediabrands, +1-212-313-5803, joe.benarroch@mediabrandsww.com;
or Sam Biederman, MediaVest Worldwide, +1-212-468-3260,
sam.biederman@mediavestww.com; or Martha Depenbrock, P&G, +1-513-983-5366,
depenbrock.mw@pg.com; or Liz Fischer, NBC Universal, +1-212-664-4825,
liz.fischer@nbcuni.com; or Isabelle Gauvry, Omnicom, +1-212-590-7314,
isabelle.gauvry@omnicommediagroup.com; or Scott Grogin, Fox Networks Group,
+1-310-369-4733, scott.grogin@fox.com; or Karen Hobson, Disney/ABC Television
Group, +1-818-569-7789, Karen.hobson@disney.com; or Shannon Jacobs, CBS
Corporation, +1-212-975-3161, sljacobs@cbs.com; or Mark Jafar, MTV Networks,
+1-212-846-8961, mark.jafar@mtvstaff.com; or Dean Mastrojohn, Unilever,
+1-201-894-2721, dean.mastrojohn@unilever.com; or Melissa Oakley, AT&T,
+1-312-751-3512, melissa.oakley@fleishman.com; or Sal Petruzzi, Turner
Broadcasting, +1-212-275-6897, sal.petruzzi@turner.com; or Amy Phillips, ESPN,
+1-212-456-0226, amy.phillips@espn.com; or Alison Rudnick, Discovery
Communications, +1-212-548-5321, alison_rudnick@discovery.com; or John Wolfe,
GroupM, +1-212-297-7160, john.wolfe@groupm.com