The acquisition was announced in March 2000 subject to Federal Trade Commission approval, which has now been obtained.

On completion, David Peeler has been appointed President and CEO of CMR, reporting to Jean-Michel Portier, Taylor Nelson Sofres Media Monitoring sector head. Mr Peeler, who joined CMR in 1995, was previously Senior Vice President of the company's Agency/Advertiser Group.

"CMR is an important addition to our media monitoring activities, complementing our well-established operations in Europe," said Pierre Weill, Managing Director of Taylor Nelson Sofres. "It strengthens our overall position in the important US market and brings to the group the leading US internet advertising expenditure business, CMRinteractive. We will benefit from David Peeler's considerable industry knowledge and client insight and look forward to working with him and his highly skilled team to develop our activities in this key growth sector, in the US and internationally."

David Peeler added, "We are excited about the opportunities that Taylor Nelson Sofres brings to CMR and our strong client base. In addition to continuing the growth of our core advertising expenditure business, CMR gains a significant and well-established international link that we will use to further enhance our marketing information initiatives worldwide, for both traditional media and the internet."

For further information, please contact:

Jean-Michel Portier, Media Monitoring sector head +33 (0) 1 30 74 81 81
Janis Parks, Investor Relations Manager +44 (0)20 8967 1584
Margaret George, Citigate Dewe Rogerson +44 (0)20 7638 9571
Email enquiries to Janis.Parks@tnsofres.com

Notes to editors

Taylor Nelson Sofres
Through its international network of more than 150 offices in over 40 countries, Taylor Nelson Sofres provides market information services in over 80 countries to national and multi-national organisations. It is ranked as the fourth largest market information group in the world.

Competitive Media Reporting (CMR)
Competitive Media Reporting (www.cmr.com) was formed in 1992 by combining several advertising tracking and broadcast proof-of-performance companies. Since then, it has evolved from a data collection and printed reports company to an information solutions company, providing advertising information across 15 media.

Today, CMR tracks over US$65 billion in advertising and more than 100 million advertising occurrences a year with a database covering more than 900,000 brands. The company serves the following market segments: advertising agencies, advertisers, broadcast television networks and stations, syndicated television services, cable television network services, radio services, consumer and business-to-business magazines, newspapers and outdoor advertising.

By offering unique competitive advertising information and analysis of critical importance to clients, CMR has cultivated a loyal customer base that includes blue chip media, communications and fmcg companies such as Bloomberg, Condé Nast, Coca-Cola, Financial Times, Grey Advertising, Interpublic Group, MCI Corp and The New York Times.

More than 600 specialists gather data at state-of-the-art facilities in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Missouri. After the data is collected, CMR adds proprietary classifications to harmonise all data across various media segments. It has developed a uniform brand classification system that is now used throughout the industry to track individual brands across all media. The company has over 700 full-time employees.

CMRinteractive
CMRinteractive, a division of CMR, collects advertising information on the web at regular intervals using automated 'crawler' applications that search throughout a specified list of web sites. The data is combined with rate information on the cost of advertising, producing analysis of expenditure by an advertiser or advertising revenue generated on a web site. This information is primarily used for competitive analysis by advertising agencies and can provide insight from a brand, industry or web site perspective. The business combines internet data with CMR's traditional media data, to provide comprehensive analyses of advertising expenditure. It is the only company in the market to own historical data.

CMRinteractive's customer base is split between advertising agencies/advertisers and new media companies, including BBDO, J. Walter Thompson, Saatchi, America Online, DoubleClick, Times Warner and Yahoo!