Arbitron Leads Series B Investment in TRA, the Leader in ROI Insights for Television

TRA Raises $13.5 million Series B Financing Round

NEW YORK TRA (http://www.traglobal.com), developer of the only scalable household-level research system to report true return-on-investment (ROI) accountability for advertising spend, today announced it has closed its second round of funding, raising $13.5 million led by Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB – News), a media and marketing research firm. The Series B financing round included participation by current investors, Kodiak Venture Partners and WPP, as well as several angel investors who are well-known advertising and media industry executives.

TRA plans to use the funds to grow its sales team and continue investing in TRA’s online reporting engine, Media TRAnalytics™, which draws from the largest, anonymous television database of 1.5 million households and the largest anonymous single source database of 370,000 households nationwide. Data is culled from aggregated tune-in data from television set-top boxes, household purchase data and household demographics so that TRA clients can run detailed audience measurement, media planning and ROI reports.

“TRA offers a critical, bottom-line solution to advertisers for greater accountability of their advertising spend,” said Michael Skarzynski, President and CEO of Arbitron. “We’re excited about the TRA solution, which promises to bring much-needed transparency to advertisers, agencies and media companies in a time that requires ROI insights.”

The original Series A investors included WPP, the world’s largest advertising and marketing services company (including consumer insight), as well as Kodiak Venture Partners, a leading venture capital firm. Both participated in TRA’s Series B financing.

“TRA is thrilled with our ability to attract an industry leader, Arbitron, as an investor and board member,” said Mark Lieberman, Chairman, CEO and Co-founder of TRA. “TRA is dedicated to the mission of seeking to provide true return-on-investment insights to the television industry for a higher degree of accountability.”

“Despite the challenging economic climate, Arbitron and our other partners recognized the strategic importance of, and strong customer demand for, our national ROI measurement service,” said Chip Meakem, managing partner of Kodiak Venture Partners. “We are excited to partner with Arbitron in investing in TRA.”

About TRA, Inc.

TRA, Inc. (True ROI Accountability for Media — http://www.traglobal.com) is a media and marketing research company whose proprietary patent-pending platform, Media TRAnalytics™, cost effectively matches the ads that people actually receive with the products people actually buy, giving advertisers, agencies and media transparency, accountable measurement, media planning and improved return-on-investment for their advertising spend. TRA maintains the largest anonymous television database of 1.5 million households and the largest anonymous single source database of 370,000 households. TRA’s clients include television networks, consumer packaged goods companies and agencies such as MediaVest, a subsidiary of Paris-based Publicis Groupe, which was TRA’s first agency to license Media TRAnalytics™. Investors include Kodiak Venture Partners, WPP and Arbitron. TRA is ISO 27001 certified, the information security management system standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) designed to ensure security controls to protect information assets.

Source: TRA