Apollo: You're going
to buy that?

MediaWeek reports that Nielsen and Arbitron will scale back their much-feared Project Apollo. The companies will instead launch a smaller pilot program of the service that will combine omnipresent people meters with product purchase scanner data. That test will run from the end of 2005 to the middle of 2006.

Privacy advocates have been, naturally, wringing hands over the complete observation abilities of the Apollo tracking system, and many traditional media customers of Nielsen and Arbitron have been sweating over the impending accountability advertisers may be able to leverage.

The two firms introduced friendlier pricing for participating in the study some weeks ago, but so far only P&G has signed up for the expensive service. Nielsen and Arbitron are slated to decide whether to roll the pilot out into a general program by early 2007.