If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Change It

If your goal is to lower your levels of phantom cume and you're not a PPM market, how do you find out how much lost listening you have now?

1.  Conduct a phone survey that includes an open-ended question asking "what's your favorite radio station?"

2.  Then, later in the same survey, ask all of the target listeners to choose their favorite radio station from an aided-recall list of all the stations you compete with.

3.  The difference between the percentage of the sample to name your radio station on an unaided basis and the ones who choose you from the aided list is a good indication of your phantom cume.

Once you have that number you can test various ways to improve your "top of mind memorability" and redo the same survey several times annually to see what works.

Improve your unaided recall and you will increase your ratings.

Low Hanging Fruit

Phantom cume is real.  PPM proves it.

As noted here last week, the average radio station's cume almost doubles under PPM measurement.

If your radio station is measured by diaries, it seems that roughly half your audience simply forgets (or doesn't care enough about what they hear) to write down listening they actually did to you.

Ponder this:

If you could help them remember all of the usage they actually do, you could double your cume audience without spending a dime in marketing!

Do Perceptions Drive Usage?

The company now known as Nielsen Audio has been using diaries to measure radio and television audiences for 55 years now and it's unquestionable that the memorability, partisanship and top-of-mindness which make a person remember a listening occasion long enough to write down when it started and when it stopped as well as the station's "call letters, dial setting or name" can be predicted accurately by measuring listener perceptions.  However, this is prone to mistakes and forgetfulness, as well as subjectivity.

So, along came PPM, with its promise of more granular actual usage data of a panel that remains fairly consistent for several years.

A compelling case for moving to PPM has been driven by many factors - beyond the mere fact that today's audiences are increasingly unwilling to take time to fill out and send back printed diaries - not the least of which is that almost every single radio station's weekly cume audience almost doubles when actual usage is the measure rather than just the ability to be remembered.

PPM proves a long-held belief that Phantom Cume exists.  Roughly half of radio usage is simply not measured by diaries because either the sample doesn't think that their usage was significant enough to take time to report or because they just didn't recall doing it.

Diary success is driven by something one major radio researcher terms "The Image Pyramid."  The stronger the most important images, the better you do.

PPM panel success requires an even higher stakes game.  Not only must you strongly hold all of the key brand images compared to the other radio stations and media choices available to your potential audience, you also have to execute in a granular level down to the minute. 

You may be a person's favorite radio station, personality or program, but if at this very minute you tune them out and another station starts doing something they love, you lose.

Everything that was important yesterday is still crucial, but now minute-by-minute usage has increased the stakes.

It Only Took 14 Years

Two weeks ago, BBM Canada announced the launch of Canada’s first radio meter panel. The Montreal market launch is the first phase of BBM Canada’s rollout plan which will see PPM measurement brought to Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton in Fall 2009.

Meanwhile, Nielsen just completed their Lexington test of their new competition for Arbitron, the roster diary, using an address-based sample.

..all of which reminded me of a memo I wrote to clients on April 15, 1994:

As diary-based survey results wobble up and down from Arbitrend to BBM, broadcasters are sometimes heard to wish aloud for a "better, more reliable means of measuring radio listening." Some time this Fall, we will get a preview of considerable testing being conducted right now at the University of Montreal on the Portable People Meter. It remains to be seen if a small pager-like device will be able to replace the written weekly diary. Meanwhile, Canada's BBM has just concluded that an aided-recall "roster diary' study and decided that the results were insufficient to justify the conversion to rostering. Last Spring, BBM conducted a parallel test in aided recall and the current unaided recall diary. On the roster diary, stations were prelisted on a sheet of peel and stick labels that could be placed in the diary as a means of improving response rates and eliminating call letter confusion. Response did improve, but only 1.4% and BBM calls the increase "statistically insignificant." In general, diary rejections did not decrease with the roster technique. Two things did improve - fewer diary editing and callbacks had to be done and phantom cume was lessened as the roster diary was able to capture more tuning than the regular diary. Diarykeepers in focus groups commented that the roster method was easy to understand and do. However, after reviewing the improvements, BBM executives decided that none of the results was significant enough to justify a change from aided recall to rostering all Canada's diaries. In fact, the review committee stated that "the current diary was performing well" overall.

.. which tempted me to wonder if there has ever been anything new under the ratings sun. Until I found this. And this. Why do I suddenly feel like Benjamin Button?