Arbitron has announced its financial results for the third quarter, which ended September 30. Net income for Q3 increased to $15.8 million, compared with $15.4 million for Q3 2011. Reported results for the third quarter included a pre-tax, non-cash charge of $0.9 million related to certain internal-use software deemed impaired as a result of enhancements to our cross-platform methodologies.

Arbitron also reported revenue of $114.3 million, an increase of 8.3 percent over revenue of $105.6 million in Q3 '11. The increase in Q3 revenue was attributed to "the nearly completed phase-in of contracted price increases for the Portable People Meter service as well as annual escalators in the Company's multi-year radio ratings contracts."

Costs and expenses for the third quarter increased by 11.4 percent to $86.1 million in 2012 from $77.2 million in 2011. Factors contributing to the growth of third quarter costs include the previously announced incremental costs associated with in-person recruitment, address-based sampling and cell-phone household sampling as well as increased investments in Arbitron Mobile and the previously noted impairment charge.

Earnings before interest, income tax expense, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for the quarter was $33.5 million, a decrease of 0.2 percent compared with EBITDA of $33.6 million for the third quarter last year. The impairment charge reduced third quarter EBITDA by $0.9 million.

William T. Kerr, President/CEO of Arbitron commented, "In the third quarter, we announced that Arbitron and comScore will work together on a groundbreaking cross-platform initiative for ESPN. We are working to integrate census-level data from PCs, mobile devices, and television set-top boxes with the personal, passive and single-source measurement capabilities of our PPM technology. We plan to track and report the consumption of video, audio and display content across radio, television, PCs, smartphones, and tablets.  Our goal is a new methodology that the media and marketing industry can embrace as the template for the future of cross-platform measurement.

"This initiative is a strong validation of our strategy for cross-platform, and is a direct outcome of the pioneering work Arbitron delivered in our cross-platform pilot for the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM). Also in the third quarter, we continued to grow our revenue and earnings as we maintained our investments in the value and utility of our core services and continued to invest in the opportunities presented by the emerging markets of mobile and cross-platform."

Arbitron is reiterating its revenue and earnings per share guidance for 2012, expecting full-year revenue to increase between 5 percent and 7 percent over its 2011 revenue of $422.3 million.