Columbia, MD - Oct. 13, 2010 - William J. McKenna has been named to the newly created position of senior vice president, new media ventures for Arbitron. He will report to Tim Smith, executive vice president, business development and strategy. McKenna will be based at the company's Columbia, MD, headquarters.

McKenna will be responsible for identifying, evaluating and executing new business opportunities with a focus on new customers and market segments for the Arbitron Portable People Meter technology. McKenna will also serve as the corporate voice at domestic and international industry forums regarding audience measurement for new media and emerging technologies.

McKenna's appointment marks his second tour at Arbitron. In the late 1980s, he was a co-creator of Arbitron's ScanAmerica service, the first syndicated television ratings service to combine advanced people meters with an in-home UPC scanner. An inventor with several U.S. patents to his credit, he coined the term Buyergraphics to describe ScanAmerica's audience metric, which integrated conventional demographic ratings with measures of packaged goods purchases by the viewing household.

Most recently, McKenna was chief executive officer and president at Integrated Media Measurement (IMMI), a developer in cellular phone-based media measurement technologies. In June 2010, Arbitron acquired the technology portfolio, patents, and trade name of IMMI.

McKenna also served as president and CEO of KMR North America, an operating unit of the KMR Group and WPP's Kantar Group. KMR North America's business practice includes KMR Software, MARs, MARs Medical, IntelliQuest, Mediafax and advisor to companies in which WPP had strategic media measurement investments.

In 1988, he founded Mediafax, a leading marketing and media research company in the Caribbean Region and sold to IBOPE Media. Additionally, he was a partner at Booz Allen and has directly supervised media research companies that collectively received MRC accreditation for three different types of media research services.