Laura Davis-Taylor’s comments on the demise of PRISM syndication in the “Blog” section of this web site are spot-on. Laura says that “what strikes me as odd about this is that it's totally incongruous with the dramatic increase in both interest and funds in the marketing at retail space… one would wonder if there's more to the story than just a lack of funds.”
… I don’t want to pre-judge this news, but I think it’s both an industry-wide and economy-wide phenomenon in this climate, that companies and larger organizations are using the cover of an ailing macroeconomic climate as a pretext to jettison plans, projects, and unfortunately people that were not performing that well in boom times. Again, I’m not rushing to judgement on PRISM, but I will say I kept skepticism to myself, two years ago, when the economy was humming along, that certain large players in the PRISM project would be willing to share their retail sales data and other metrics with industry at large (i.e. their competitors). So indeed, there could be as Laura says “more to the story than just a lack of funds.” In fact, the news that Walmart was pulling out of PRISM preceded the news from Nielsen that PRISM as a whole was pulling the plug on syndication of results.
Reaction from the industry on the demise of PRISM? I’d like to know if folks think it is all downturn-related, or if it’s more a story of internal politics of the institutions involved?