"Monitoring The Meter Readers"

PPM Problems & Solutions

Now that ratings in the top-50 markets have gone or will go from quarterly to monthly, and trends from monthly to weekly, it's time to look at "monitoring the meter readers." That would be Arbitron. We want to examine many of the factors that affect ratings. Revenue is directly tied to and driven by ratings. The more ears we have to rent, the more revenue we will make

Re-Focus On The Right Estimates

It's important to remember that share now has a new definition. It's no longer share of radio listening, but share of encoded station listeners, or share of those who are exposed to encoded signals. For those whose markets are already measured by PPM, you've probably noticed overall, the shares are higher than what you were used to seeing with the diary. When you compare share against other stations, while that may be useful for competitive purposes, you might also want to consider focusing on AQH persons or ratings. Why? Because these are the estimates that really drive revenue for your station.

Next, you want to re-examine daily cume. Again, if you're in a PPM market, one of the first things you will notice is that there are now two different cume estimates -- daily and weekly. While weekly cume is the estimate we're already familiar with, it actually doesn't factor in AQH share, ratings or persons under PPM. Now you may see more bounce in your weekly cume estimates that you saw with the diary. This is due to the nature of passive electronic measurement.

PPM ratings are based on average daily cume estimates, not weekly cume estimates. When it comes to figuring out your share or your ratings, the daily cume and the daily Time Spent Listening (TSL) are used in that calculation. You should track your audience from one quartet-hour to the next. PPM estimates are much more granular than they were with diary-based estimates. That's because listeners tend to round up their listening occasions in the diary, while PPM detections show many more listening occasions but of shorter duration. This means that tracking your audience from one quarter-hour to the next is a worthwhile exercise under PPM.

In the PPM analysis software, select ranker and run the quarter-hour by quarter-hour average persons estimates. I would strongly suggest you pick 6+ for the demo. You want to choose the largest sample size possible. That way you'll be able to see how your station changes throughout the day. Is there a pattern developing? Does the audience usually tune out at the same time? Are specific features attracting additional audience?

Language Weighting

Here's a quick language-weighting refresher: Despite what's happening with population estimates, Arbitron remains fully committed to language weighting. Language weighting requires extensive software and compatible population estimates. Significant progress is being made on both.

Currently, Arbitron estimates are weighted on several dimensions including age, sex, geography and race/ethnicity. Arbitron has asked about language usage among Hispanics since 1997.

For some, the question was why bother? The answer: Language usage has a direct connection with radio listening. Language-weighting systems alone cannot handle the information. We have to look at highs and lows for Spanish language-dominant universe estimates.

PPM Evolution

Why do some Urban programmers believe PPM is good for radio, while others agree there is a need for electronic measurement, but claim the current system has too many flaws? There have been PPM sampling problems.

In theory, PPM will better connect retail/advertising activity to retail sales, proving its effectiveness. It will put radio on the same platform as television, improving its chance of garnering a greater share of broadcast advertising budgets. It will allow radio to compete with TV and cable for children's advertising and to program to this audience. And it will eventually increase radio advertising revenue overall.

Being able to look at all media using the same measurement system could make for improved media planning and buying decisions, which in turn could increase the credibility of ratings overall. The PPM has a decidedly better lens for measuring today's diverse audience and observing media advertising. It is designed to focus on radio audience data, cable and television audience data ... and even Internet stream audience data. This is all captured from the same respondent and integrated into a single database.

PPM will get rid of phantom cume, deliver more accuracy and less wobble. We're all curious to see what type of impact the PPM has on listeners of our genre, who are very on-the-go, active people.

Also, on the plus side, PPM promises to provide quicker answers to questions on whether or not a contest, promotion or new marketing ploy worked. If you have an idea to take a promotion and roll with it for a couple of months, you'll be able to check results within a few days or weeks.

We all know our own habits in an automobile where we're punching around. Now, for the first time, we'll have a device that actually measures that jumping around. Then, if we can match that back to the programming that took place at a particular moment, we'll be able to learn a lot about the appeal of different elements, or programs on our stations.

In Conclusion

We need to know the enemy to conquer it. We're not saying that Arbitron is the enemy, but they are a force that needs to be better understood. Ratings suppliers such as Arbitron don't intentionally make a lot of mistakes, but you constantly have to watch out and be aware of the many call letter, slogan, station name and frequency changes. Things can get confused and occasionally go wrong.

Even though Arbitron has been audited and put more systems in place to prevent errors, they're people and people make mistakes. We need to make sure that we're getting all the credit that we deserve by understanding how to play the Arbitron game, and by forcing them to give us the benefit of the doubt when it is warranted.

When the ratings go down (and they will) we want to find out exactly what happened. It's very hard to find out what happened when you don't know where to go for answers.

What we don't want to do is accept the fallacy that our audience is an elusive and somehow special group of listeners that Arbitron is going out of its way to avoid. Nor should we accept the mindset that says, "Poor us, our ratings are lower because our audience is harder to find, not as smart or inarticulate."

They may or may not be, but they are listeners who count and who have needs. What we have to do is determine those needs and serve them. Then we have to get full credit for them when Arbitron tallies up the score.

Finally, Urban stations should absolutely understand and sell the qualitative value of our audience. One danger comes when be begin to believe that our numbers and our audience have less value. The other comes with not being able to sort through the confusion that often comes with "monitoring the meter readers." Once you sort it all out, you may discover several opportunities on tap. And if you can take advantage of them you can score.

Ratings success today depends on foresight, good judgment, grit, firm resolution and settled purpose. A winning radio station is not the result of chance. Neither is a failure the result of bad luck.

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