Wednesday, June 03, 2009

I Know It's Bad Blog Ethics To Simply Tell You To Go Read Another Blog, But...

Cory Treffiletti's MediaPost column "Time Spent Is The Right Metric To Measure Engagement" isn't just about online advertising. PPM's "TSE" (time spent exposed) vs diary TSL (time spent listening) absolutely proves that just because I love Oprah's brand, it doesn't mean that her show yesterday was good enough to make me listen to the entire hour.

Ask any foreground radio personality who had great ratings in diaries and then suffered the all-too-common precipitous drop in their first month of PPM measurement. Just because listeners to your station like you enough to write your name in their book does not guarantee that they listen to you at all in reality.
When you break down the individual media vehicles, time spent is actually quite easy to report on -- so why shouldn't this become the de-facto metric for measuring engagement? If consumers spend more time than the average, they must be interested in your product or service -- and if they are interested, that is a measure of intent. The more efficient you are at implementing a campaign, which includes paid as well as non-paid placements, the more likely your campaign will be to drive that increase, which ultimately results in sales.

How engaging, entertaining and expeditious is your content? It's not how long you talk. It's how long they listen.

2 comments:

Facebook Thread said...

Nikki Landry at 1:20pm June 3
So true, and I always say it's not WHAT you say that matters, it's what THEY REMEMBER you saying that counts.

Fred Brooks Fahrenbruch at 1:23pm June 3
I remember your wise words of " WORD COUNT". I always keep that in mind as well !

Dawn Avello at 1:28pm June 3
Aint' that the truth..... my shows are like a black hole.. once I suck them in .. they can't leave! Ok... that was a bit extreme. LOL Anyway... I AGREE!

Don Kellogg at 1:35pm June 3
Or its not how long they listen it's how long Arbitrons PPM says they listen.

Jaye Albright at 1:53pm June 3
True, Don. Diary listeners tend to listen six or seven quarter hours per occasion. PPM is half that or even less, and it's hard to deny that PPM is real usage of the panelists (though of course they may or may not represent your actual audience). C'est la statistics and reliability.

Facebook Thread said...

Kim McAbee at 1:56pm June 3
These days we can add, "It's not how much we type, but how much of it they read".

Steve Shannon at 2:16pm June 3 via Facebook Mobile
With SO many music options without any talk,you better have something to say,talk plenty,& pray they listen!
Music Radio...soon resting in the same graveyard as R&R.

Terry Coffey at 2:19pm June 3
Until Arbiton figures out how to measure active versus passive listening with PPM...it's another flawed system that will unrealistically reward "background" stations.