Free Must-Have Research Tools

Just three quick highlights from Arbitron's Client Conference and Jacobs Media Summit...

U.S. Census Bureau's Dr. Robert Groves: The U.S. Census Bureau has several free online tools to help you get a handle on the local job market.

“You see where workers live, where they work, lives and how they commute. The possibilities and uses are endless for radio and any other planners.”

Industry Focus allows users to identify the leading industries for an area, focus on a particular industry to see how it ranks among top industries, and view graphs and charts of worker characteristics within industries. Users can analyze industries by state, county, workforce investment or metro area based on eight workforce indicators.

On the Map is a Web-based mapping tool showing where people live in relation to where they work with reports on age, earnings, industry distribution and local workforce indicators.

The Local Employment Dynamics data tools can be found at http://lehd.did.census.gov/led/.

Speaking of maps: Google maps has real time traffic info, and it's likely your listeners access it now from their vehicle if they have a smart phone. If you do traffic on the radio, you need to be looking at this info if it's available in your city or listeners will know more than you do.

Some undeniable great info for sales and programming: Radio Delivers 93 Percent of its Lead-In Audience During the Average Commercial Break - Arbitron, Media Monitors and Coleman Insights expand on landmark 2006 study

The 2011 study of minute-by-minute audience levels across 48 top radio markets again demonstrates that radio maintains its audience delivery during commercial breaks, contrary to the common misperception among advertisers, agencies and even radio executives that audiences during commercial breaks are a fraction of the numbers that were listening to the station just before the commercials began.

For the 2011 study, Arbitron, Media Monitors and Coleman Insights analyzed 18 million commercial breaks, 62 million minutes of commercials and 866 stations for a year of audience data from all 48 PPM markets to compare the audience level for each minute of a commercial break to the audience for the minute before the commercials began.