Doing Diary Duty, Part I

Attitude determines how well you do it.

As we sail further into the second phase of the fall Arbitron sweeps, I thought this might be a good time to take an extended look at some of the Arbitron mysteries and see if we could offer a few suggestions and even share a couple of secrets.

First, there are two ways to get additional diary information. The first is to use PD Advantage, a product that Arbitron provides. The second is to take a trip to Arbitron World headquarters in Columbia, Maryland and look at the diary information yourself.

As you may know, it is vitally important to have your diaries completely examined and reviewed every ratings period. The purpose of an Arbitron diary review is to provide information that is actionable, precise and accurate. The object is to check editing to see if your station is getting all the credit it deserves. Then you also need to do a little defensive programming -- to examine heavy listening quintiles for both your station and your competition to make certain the heavy listening competitor(s) were not credited improperly and that your competitor did not receive more quarter-hours than they deserve.

In addition, you need to look at diary credit to other stations around your rounded dial position. An outside-the-market station can often claim and get credit for dial position. Sometimes in the comments section of the diary, the diary-keeper writes about the programming or morning show on your station. You could lose valuable cume and quarter-hour credit.

Another reason to review your diaries is to check for diary entries that require what Arbitron calls "special handling." Diary-keepers do not always write down your station the way you want them to. It would be great if all diary-keepers wrote down the call letters or exact dial position making Arbitron's edit system fool-proof. But the fact is, diary-keepers write down the station in more ways than one could imagine, often mismatching your station with another.

What happens when you find a diary-keeper obviously intended to credit listening to your station, but Arbitron has to "split the entry" because of incorrect identification? These incidences can lead to possible Arbitron "special handling" which is only implemented when continuous specific evidence is provided in each survey to show the problem continued. This is why I recommend continuous diary reviewing.

Many times I have seen stations lose 25% of their cume in phase 2 and time-spent-listening dropped by two hours. How many times does a station's competitor gain tremendously while your station drops or stays even despite significant contests and promotions? It happens a lot.

Without some form of Arbitron diary analysis you wouldn't know, for example, that 17% of the market's diaries came from week 12, and in that week your competition had a dozen diaries all with more that 200 quarter-hours, coming from perhaps just five different homes, leading to your competition's third phase dramatic ratings spike. I've seen stations make regrettable format adjustments based on this mis-information.

Does Playing The Arbitron Game Work?

For years we've all been hearing stories about certain moves one can make to help spike the ratings. So what's up with this? Do they really work? Well, yes and no. Some work and work very well; others just waste time and money. Let's just say instead of ratings manipulation, there are some secrets that can provide a competitive advantage.

First, let's look at the quarter-hour maintenance theory. You know the one that says if you can come up with a forty-minute music sweep every hour you can hustle your homies into helping you get additional credit. All you have to do is begin your sweep by at least fifty-five and run these sweeps every hour.

The problem with this theory is that it pre-supposes that both your active and passive listeners suddenly become devoted fans who sit in their cars, homes, offices or jobs with their Arbitron diaries and their stopwatches, writing down exactly when they listened. We all know that's just not what's happening.

The reality is that most diary keepers don't fill out their diaries that scrupulously or that accurately. We agree that diary keepers can be influenced and to some extent manipulated, but not to the extent you might expect.

Another question that keeps coming up is do you have to program for ratings? And the answer is unequivocally "yes!" Now this doesn't mean that you shouldn't have all the other elements in place, including the best possible play list, rotations and a great jock staff. But we always have to keep in mind that we are in a constant ratings war.

Arbitron is aware of the "ratings wars." Like all successful businesses, Arbitron is changing to meet its customers' needs. Arbitron is looking to increase response rates and longer term responses. One of the ways Arbitron plans to do this is with the introduction of the Portable People Meter (PPM). Despite some delays, industry support for PPM is building.

What Makes The Meter Better? (Or Is It?)

By now you've heard at least something about the PPM. The PPM is a portable, pager-like device that captures all consumer exposure to electronic media. The consumer wears or carries the PPM that, in turn, captures all listening in or out of home, throughout the day.

The PPM brings more granular, frequent, timelier and more stable information and data. There are longitudinal data analysis opportunities. The PPM offers multimedia, single source data. The PPM also offers a linkage of media exposure to retail visits. It supports the industry drive for accountability and return on investment (ROI). PPM is going to be connected to radio, cable and television as well as outdoor and ultimately print.

Today, following efforts in several test markets such as Houston and Philadelphia, Arbitron has encoded its data with other retail media data. It has the ability to take the radio industry to another level. The overall objective is to help the radio industry gain the confidence it needs to transform to PPM.

Naturally, consultants such as myself, who really understand Arbitron and the PPM, can play a critical role in this process and we address questions about the business impacts of PPM. How will it affect revenue and business? Arbitron will work closely with industry organizations. Arbitron is still looking to partner with Nielsen, but Arbitron is looking to go forward without Nielsen, if necessary, although there is every indication that they will be involved.

Arbitron is going to address reporting initiatives, response rates, proportionality, bounce, the world of telecom (DNC number portability) and cell phones. They will also look at the short, medium and long-term issues around response rates. These concepts have some interrelationship:

How well are various demographic cells represented with respect to demos, race ethnicity, and geography?

Some groups are tougher to get. Arbitron over-samples when they can. Young gay males who live with others offer better-represented demos. Under representation is still a problem.

Bounce & Weighting

A re-occurring complaint (and often one that is definitely warranted) involves the issues of bounce and weighting. Weighting can have an exacerbating effect. The key is what respondents write down, and, with rare exception, Arbitron does not control what respondents write in the diary. There are edit rules when things are not clear. Is there more bounce today? Probably, but it's tough to measure.

Now there are more competitive stations in every market. Smaller estimates mean that smaller changes cause bigger rank shifts. There is now greater dependence on shares instead of AQH persons or ratings. Use of extrapolations and expectations of consistency across individual months causes unrealistic expectations.

There are differential premiums for Blacks and Hispanics everywhere. And there have also been male 25-34 treatment changes. They now involve a second phone center and E-Consent (use of the Internet). Respondents will soon be asked to go online to respond electronically. There is now a new Caller ID (a message has been added to the call so you know it's Arbitron) along with a $1 increase in household follow-up premiums.

Arbitron has instituted consent promised incentives. Arbitron has tested this concept twice. All households receive a pre-placement letter and $1 along with a $5 "thank you" offer if the respondent agrees. During the placement call, interviewers mention the $5 during the intro and other times if needed, and $5 is sent in post-placement. As a result, winter 2003 saw a 6.2-point gain in response rates.

Sometimes when the response rate is up, demo proportionality is negatively affected. There was no consent rate gain when compared to a letter and a dollar.

Diary P1s stayed for top ten Black and Hispanic households, with a 4% post-placement for Black Hispanics and young male 18-34 households in the other 20 low response rate markets.

There was a summer 2003 test of refusal conversion incentives during which $2.00 and $5.00 incentives were sent to "early refusals" before the conversion call. As a result, refusal conversion increased by 16-17 percent. There will now be a pre-conversion incentive of $1.00 for all Wednesday refusal households that began in fall 2004.

Looking ahead, there will be a couple of tests to highlight the E-diary. This will be the first test of an Internet-based Arbitron diary. It's coming, probably later this year. Arbitron has conducted two small-scale tests so far using three diary versions.

New steps involve refining designs and more qualitative testing prior to full market tests. Issues will center on audience estimates in comparison to the paper diary with no immediate implementation plans, but it's on the horizon. It will be available to Arbitron as an option when re-engineering is completed.

A quick look at the address-based sample shows the phone frame is deteriorating. Cell phone number portability and Do Not Call (DNC) have experienced changes as well. Arbitron must look at alternatives to the telephone frame. They have tested an address-based sample frame that they will mail to all households and call those that Arbitron can call. There are numerous issues with using addresses instead of phone numbers. Plus there are telephone/telecom issues.

As of December 2003, there were 54.3 million phone numbers had been registered with the FTC. Arbitron is exempt from the Do Not Call rules since the company is not a telemarketer. The prediction is that this may be a good thing for telephone survey research because fewer calls over time mean more participation. Arbitron has never included cell phones in the Arbitron sample frame.

Here are two key issues. Cell phones belong to individuals while landlines are associated with households. There are provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act which are affected. Response rates were not that high, but the refusal rates were very low and there were lots of voicemail and disconnected numbers. Ten percent of the respondents did not live in the three states that Arbitron called.

When we look at number portability, we find that wireless-to-wireless is not an issue. There are some questions being raised. How important is in-car listening to overall radio listening? Is radio losing ground with cars? Are satellite radio and other new devices impacting AM/FM radio? Is in-car listening only a major market concern? How important are pre-sets? How high of a priority should traffic reports be? How valuable is the in-car listener to advertisers? How large an impact is cell phone use having on in-car listening?

Next week, we'll look at some answers to these and other questions.

Word.