Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Ready To Redo Your Metro Hot Zips Map?

As the Arbitron Affiliates Radio Advisory Council meets this week in Annapolis you can expect lots of announcements from the press room (like this one, today, on new metro definitions which will happen by the start of the Fall 2011 books).

"The new criterion for determining if a county qualifies to be in the Metro is based on a 70-point criterion, which replaces the 55 percent listening/15 percent commuting criteria that had been in place since 1998."

Another rumored topic at the meetings is whether to go to "average minute" audience estimates in place of the old "five minutes in a quarter hour = 15" editing rule in PPM markets, or at least to allow five minutes overlapping two quarter hours to count as a full 15, if not 30.

Meanwhile, in Canada, where BBM did go to "average minute" listening when it launched its PPM service, there are rumors that they are reconsidering that decision and may actually change back to "average quarter hour" because buyers proved unwilling to ignore what appeared to be "lower audience levels" in the average minute in spite of the fact that you can do the editing math for them and show that the estimated audience size actually remains the same, it's just the measurement and editing rules which changed.

Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.

Actually, as PPM has proven to many of us in both countries, you could get it even if you personally didn't wish for it...

1 comment:

Jim MacLeod said...

BBM Canada has been reviewing all the components that comprise PPM currency as plannned after 2 years. The work is not quite complete, but Average Minute Audience was discussed and the Currency Committee voted unanimously to maintain AMA. Not sure where you hear rumours about quarter hours, but it is NOT from the BBM members responsible for making the decision.

Jim MacLeod
President
BBM Canada