When It Comes To Cross Media Usage, Keep Your Eyes On Canada

Since BBM Canada makes use of the PPM to measure both major market TV and radio usage, Canada's media ratings company is in an excellent position to compare apples to apples in all forms of encoded audio and video usage.

BBM has three initiatives underway:

• BBM started a test last August to determine whether or not the PPM radio meter panel can support Internet streaming measurement (i.e., separating Internet streaming from live broadcast currently reported together) and to look into the volume of Internet streaming usage by radio broadcaster audiences.
  
  Twenty-two Toronto member stations started participating in a test late last summer, separately encoding their online radio stream.  Now, 25 Toronto radio stations are encoding both their terrestrial and streaming programming.
  
  Then, in November eighteen stations in Vancouver Central (Metro) Area were added to the test and as of December, sixteen stations have participated in Montreal Central (Franco and Anglo). 
  
  Individual station-level data have been presented to all participating broadcasters in each market by BBM, but the data is not yet currency for public release.
  
  However, the early headline is quite promising, boding well for the future.
  
  The combination of over the air PPM usage average minute audience and encoded streaming appears to increase radio's total week 12+ audience by about 3%.  OF course, there is great variability in online streaming between stations.
  
  BBM told its member stations this week that overall the highest percentage of online listening occurs during the workday at 5%.
  
  
• The second initiative is to report radio tuning and television viewing in a single database. 
  
  BBM’s Cross Media Database was tested in the past few months, and will be released in May with data back to September 2013.  Quarterly releases will occur until August, and then Cross Media will be released monthly.
  
  Cross Media Data is not currency as it is based on Central Areas, and Television currency is based on Extended Markets, but this single source data should have many other uses.  Data will be at the respondent level so users will have a lot of flexibility looking at tuning between radio and television from the same sample.
  
  
• The third initiative, Non Linear Measurement, is in a proof of concept test.  This is designed to report media that is accessed from servers.  The initial test is for Video on Demand, but this technology to extend PPM to user-controlled access will have many other uses in radio and television.   Television broadcasters have installed the software based encoders and will insert the PPM codes as the material is loaded to their servers.  Data should be available for industry assessment mid-2014.  BBM is the only measurement organization able to measure Non Linear consumption in its panel.  BBM already reports all live streaming, so addition of non-linear will give users a full view of consumption of their programming regardless of the platform. 

These initiatives extend BBM measurement across media, and much deeper into media now reported.  It should be clear in a few months how these datasets can be used.

Organizations south of the 49th parallel working in this same area have a lot to learn from our Canadian friends right now.

I Wonder What Cluster This Guy Belongs To?

Earlier this week, BBM Canada announced implementation of geodemographic classification of its PPM households using an aggregated version of the PRIZM consumer segmentation system from Environics Analytics. 

These categories, which are based on the characteristics of residents living in each individual geographic area, use geodemographics and psychographics to provide insights into the behaviour of Canadian consumers.

The system classifies all PPM households into one of 14 segments based on the location of each PPM household.  The classification of households will be reported as a demographic category through currently available respondent-level data analysis software and will be accessible to all BBM Canada members that subscribe to the television or radio PPM service.  

These demographic classifications were introduced into the overnight TV data this week (starting 3/11).  For radio, the classifications will be added effective with the April 4, 2013 data release. 

Right now, country radio seems to be doing very well in PPM measurement after a rocky start in many markets, so I suppose there will be some who say "don't TOUCH my sample," but as Arbitron continues to weight its sample by ten factors, this addition of geo- and psycho- targeting in Canada is going to be fascinating to study very carefully as it rolls out.

Political targeting has demonstrated how people tend to live in "tribes" of folks similar to them geographically and so with PPM's smaller samples who remain in the panel for long periods of time, representing every category possible is a step in the right direction.

It's too early to tell if this move will improve samples in that way, but at least the ability to run analyses based on them sounds promising to me.

Let's watch and see how many of the 66 Prizm lifestyle types the sample is able to accurately represent in proportion to the actual population in each market where this is being implemented.  That will start to indicate just how large each local sample should ideally be, at least, and perhaps even demonstrate why share compression is so typical in PPM numbers.

Thanks to BBM's visionaries for providing us with new numbers to hold their feet to the fire with.

In PPM Your So-Called "Hot Zips" Are Really ARB's Or BBM's Hot Zips

My first reaction to last week's Arbitron-The Research Director webinar on the primacy of "P-1" listeners in driving average quarter hour audience in PPM measurement was "so what else is new?"

The P1 Effect: How First Preference Listeners Drive Ratings In A PPM World (June 2010):
First Preference listeners, are THE primary driver of Average Quarter-Hour audience. 10 years ago, Research Director, Inc.'s groundbreaking analysis proved it in a diary world….but how crucial is P1 listening to a station's ratings success in PPM? (pdf - 37 pages/3,829k) Also, click here to see a recorded presentation of this study by Charlie Sislen. (Streamed Windows Media File/approximately 35 minutes over broadband connection).

Then, it hit me that what IS new is that many of us need to rethink what a "P-1" is before fully grasping the importance of the new data.

In even the largest markets country stations have fewer than 20 "PPM-defined hot zips," areas with a higher than average incidence rate of country radio heavy users in the PPM panel.

Of course, the typical country station actually has as many as five times as many REAL hot zip code areas, as our own databases and many years of diary samples have proven, but the majority of them simply don't count as often as they used to because of the small PPM sample size.

You may be very popular and used regularly by a majority of the folks in some areas of your metro, but if those key demographics and geographies are not proportionately represented in the sample, it's going to look like you have no listeners.

So, since panelists being retained in the sample for as long as possible is ARB and BBM's goal, the panel you have is the panel you must learn to live with.

It's important to really understand how the panelists who make use of your radio station live their lives, why they use other stations and work with that matrix while trying not to water your product and marketing down so that you don't diminish your brand essence, which is the key to long-term success.

In PPM, P1 is not a description of "loyalty" or "brand depth," it's all about the amount of usage and that is all. Heavy radio users listen to many, many more stations than the average radio user.

The good side of that fact is that building cume is really not as necessary as we all thought it was based on recall measurement. We all have twice as much cume as we thought we did.

But, the bad news is that those folks are barely aware of a great majority of the radio they use.

Clutter, over-commercialization, hype, songs listeners dislike or are tired of and air personality content that doesn't immediately grab and hold a listener hurt "P-1" listening.

A station position, personality, song or benchmark that a radio user loves may actually drive that person away from the station more times than their strong positive image brings them back, compared to the other choices.

That's the "P-1" Sislen encourages us to focus on in PPM markets.

Take Aspirin Before Reading

There's a strong possibility that this is going to hurt your head.

Back in the Diary Days our fight was for bigger Average Quarter Hours. Now, on Planet PPM, technology has completely changed how BBM and ARB measure tuning.

Thanks to the always inquisitive PD of JRfm-The Peak/Vancouver Gord Eno, A&O recently was conveyed an excellent explanation from BBM on the technology of the PPM device:

"We now measure everything in fifteen second segments. Yes, seconds. It takes keeping a listener fifteen seconds for us to be in the game. If we win three out of the four fifteen second segments we win that minute. If we get two out of four, the station that wins the first fifteen seconds wins the minute."

Yikes, talk about micromanaging our content!

If you've read much that I have blogged here, I bet you've already learned you have to grab them in the first seven seconds.

Now, add to that. You must also hold onto them for at least three 15 second periods inside every minute.

Technically, you need the last best "code" in the 15 seconds to be ascribed the first 15 seconds.

That last best code could come in the first second or the 15th second. If you're not familiar with code qualities and what this does to the assignment of the 15 seconds to the last best code, contact your BBM or ARB rep who can lessen your need for aspirin as you contemplate these technical realities.

First, of course, if we donʼt keep them for the first fifteen seconds weʼre not even in the game.

Really, you only need to have the last best code in each 15 seconds, they don’t have to have stayed for the full 30.

But, it takes three 15 minute assignments of the last best code to outright “win” the full 60 seconds – and those three 15 second assignments don’t have to be consecutive, for example: first 15, station CAAA has last best code, Second 15, station CBBB has last best code, Third 15, station CAAA has last best code, and Fourth 15, station CAAA has last best code – minute goes to station CAAA.

Plus, we need them to stay for thirty seconds just to be in a tie. But it takes forty five seconds to win that minute. Then the battle begins all over again for the next minute.

Most minutes wins.

Eno joked with the BBM representative who offered the insights that the battlefield has moved from quarter hours to quarter minutes.

The BBM rep's response was that things hadn’t really changed, and the focus as always should be on making better radio, because better radio gets better numbers.

Agreed, but knowing the mechanics of PPM helps us understand the ʻscienceʼ and how/when the radio consumerʼs impatience affects measurement.

Another revelation: the PPM code is not a constant stream.

Because the code likes to hide in the content the code stream is variable. When there is music, the code flows along nicely. When there are gaps, such as spoken word, the code will embed itself behind any audio whatsoever, music, talk, random ambient noise will even encode.

Now, hereʼs the biggie. If there is four seconds of dead air there is no code.

The solution? Donʼt allow dead air.

Dead air (provided your dead air lasts for more than 15 seconds) means no code.

No code. No measurement. No measurement means weʼre kicked off the fifteen second battlefield and weʼre not even in the fight.

To be totally factual, it only takes the last best code of the 15 second period.

It’s possible for there to be 4 different “last best codes” in each 15 seconds. Your code could come in as the ‘last best code’ on the 5th, 9th, 12th or even the 15th second with audio.

Take two panelists and call me in the morning.

Asking The Right Question

I have been seeing this movie a lot in the last year: station is disappointed in its initial PPM rank, so they commission a major radio research company to do a perceptual to see what's wrong.

The research comes back that the station is very healthy and pronounces that the station's brand is strong but the problem is "execution."

Could this be because the researcher is asking the same questions in the same ways which were so predictive of success in diaries, weekly cume and favorite station + importance of parameters + key image ownership?

Shouldn't we be asking in the major markets where PPM is going to be currency in 2010 about daily cume? Daily occasions? Key personalities and programming elements which drive listeners to use a station more days per week and more times per day?

In the U.S., Arbitron is planning a first quarter update of PD Advantage web and promises new reports to be added. Hopefully, one of them will be a day by day report of how many panelists use each competitive station each day of the week and how many times per day for each daypart as well as how long the exposure is for each of them.

Sadly, from my perspective, Canada's BBM is another story completely.

Their InfoSys software (a report from it is pictured) was developed in Spain (for TV, not radio). I have as yet to encounter a Canadian programmer who even fully understands how it works, let alone how to begin to extract info like ARB's current Vital Signs report, which has been available to both diary and PPM stations in PD Advantage software for years now, let alone anything more sophisticated to assist programmers in understanding what they need to do to grow their shares.

Hopefully, BBM includes a New Years resolution to look very hard at the Programmer's Package ARB provides online each month and come up with something as helpful.

Also, would it be wise to reconsider the decision to show only "average minute audience," rather than "average quarter hour," the standard for comparison we've all used since radio audience measurement was created? Not only is BBM comparing apples to oranges in its diary reports vs PPM studies, but audience sizes appear to go down. Who thought that would be a good idea?

We all have a lot to gain if radio programmers can quickly understand the differences between ratings driven by memorablity and behavioral research.

I wish ARB and BBM would both step up their efforts to help stations figure out what's going on and what they need to do about it.

So far, I'd say that ARB is running faster in the right direction than either BBM or radio's longtime perceptual researchers across North America, but we all have plenty of catching up to do if we expect advertisers to see us as "programming experts," let alone our ratings as credible and useful.

Your Cume Needs To Be 30% Higher

Coleman compared a full year of audience data on 13 "High Performance Stations" -- so designated because their Adults 18-49 audience shares were significantly larger than the shares of competing stations -- to 68 other stations in Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver using InfoSys+ radio software from BBM Analytics.

Among other findings, this comparison revealed that:

• The average Daily Cume Rating of the High Performance Stations was 130% higher than the average for the non-High Performance Stations
• High Performance Stations achieved slightly higher Time Spent Listening levels, primarily because they generate an average of 5.6 listening sessions per day, 15% more than the 4.9 average number of daily listening sessions generated by non-High Performance Stations
• At 69.9%, the proportion of listening High Performance Stations generate out-of-home is higher than the 62.9% of listening generated out-of-home by non-High Performance stations

"Our findings are similar to those we uncovered in a similar analysis of American PPM data in 2009" said Coleman Insights VP Doug Hyde, who authored the study. "They support the idea that those radio stations that are well-known, have clearly-defined positions and have brand attributes that listeners want to affiliate with are the most likely to perform well under PPM measurement."

I find it sadly ironic that BBM Analytics' blog still includes a link to a very nice concept "Creating Passionate Users" since the very radio formats with the most passionate users are the ones which tend to do worst in PPM measurement due to the too-small sample sizes where the only number they seem to be able to track reliably is 6+ cume. You'd think that the ratings firms who do the measurement would understand that by now, but it seems that they do not. (3/26: be sure to read the comments, where I am called to task for stretching a blog link into a point at least one step too far and I apologize to BBM for it, then try to explain why I am so worried about this issue)

Yes, at a time when media fragmentation is the megatrend, it would be very nice if radio's audience measurement system wasn't crushing radio stations with small, but loyal and reponsive audiences, but that's simply not the way it is. Listeners look to radio for more diversity and variety now and yet PPM's tiny (compared to what would be ideal) panel samples reward just the opposite.

Forget about "passionate users" until PPM samples double or triple. Until then, it's all about cume, cume, cume.

Averages

For years I have been saying that the average Arbitron diary keeper writes 2.6 radio stations in their book during the survey week and the average BBM ballot contains an average of 2.2 station mentions, which convinced me over time after many diary and ballot reviews that pretty much every diary respondent in both the U.S, and Canada wrote down, more or less, ‘two or three’ radio stations.

I'm betting that a lot of us have programmed our radio stations based on those numbers.

Somewhere deep down I have always known that if two people are in a room, one of them weighs 300 pounds and the other’s weight is 100, there is no one in the room even close to the ‘average’ of the two, but it has taken PPM data emerging over the last few years from Montreal, Philadelphia and Houston to prove how far my (not so) "educated" guess was from the truth, and how different each market can be when you start to see data as granular as PPM permits.

BBM reports that the Montreal electronic data shows - in a city with English speakers, French speakers and bilinguals and radio stations for each of those groups - that people actually, on average, tune into four or five radio stations.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. PPM markets out so far the average meter measures listening to six or seven stations.

In Canada, panelists are permitted to stay in the sample for up to five years, while in America, ARB removes them after two.

ARB VP PPM Sales John Snyder and Michelle Barker of Arbitron’s Research staff crunched some PPM data from Philadelphia in November 2008 (each dot is one meter in the sample) and found that two people actually listened to 25 different radio stations.

During the same month in New York, five panelists cumed between 26 and 30 stations (click on the graphic to enlarge it).

Conclusion: those averages I have been living with for my entire radio career were wrong; which becomes more obvious now that we can see real usage without the bias of top of mind recall.

I’ve always believed it, but now I know for sure: when we see PPM data from the rest of Canadian major markets and more American large markets later this year, we’re going to find that radio listening in Quebec is not the same as it is in Calgary, which is different from Toronto, which is different from Vancouver, which is different from San Francisco, which is different from Atlanta.

Yes, we've all been saying it for years: every market is different.

Now, we are getting the data which proves it.

The (PPM) Show Must Go On

With Calgary's downtown flooding (which actually happened two weeks ago) still scuttling some "Stampede" events as recently as this week, it's going to be very interesting to see how the disaster affected radio and TV usage when BBM's PPM monthly data comes out for clients only next month.

BBM reported in the midst of the torrent "closely monitoring our panels in Alberta to assess any impact on the ratings data.  At this time, BBM only has overnight preliminary metrics to be relied on for any insights.  Certainly these events will have affected the lives of many individuals on our panels.  At this time we are seeing minor reductions in panelists’ participation.  Both the Calgary EM and the Calgary Central panel are performing within their respective targets."

They have observed in-tab samples on overnight data that represent approximately a 4-8% reduction in comparison to previous weekend levels and state that they are confident that there is no one age/sex demographic underrepresented at this time.

The chart below illustrates the differences observed on performance metrics flood weekend, versus the previous weekend.  Fridays were included in this weekend comparison as the displacing events began.

BBM is currently contacting broadcaster members in the Calgary market to ensure they have captured any disruptions to station encoding during this period since a number of major station studios are downtown.

Watch this space for what you know will be the only good news to come out of this disaster - media heroically covered it non-stop (notwithstanding one talker's rant about it) and listening/viewing levels will again show the impact and power of the old, reliable "reach media" during times of community need and disaster.

It's Bad Enough That They Had A Fire

BBM Canada distributed a notice today, reporting on the PPM monthly data for Corus' CHQR/CFGQ-FM/CKRY-FM, Calgary, titled "Encoding Issue:"

As a result of a fire at the station, the signals for CHQR, CFGQ-FM and CKRY-FM were unencoded on July 11, 2012 for a period of approximately 28 hours.  The approximate start and end times of the incident are detailed in the PPM Technical Incident Report which is available on BBM’s secure website.

It's one thing to report the news.  It's quite another to BE the news.

Fortunately, the week 40-52 BBM survey is 13 weeks long, running from May 28 through August 26, releasing on September 6.

You have to know that today's Calgary monthly PPM release had to make some local Corus people's hair catch on fire and anyone who's measured by PPM these days had to feel some sympathy pains.

Let's hope that the final quarterly update gets back to normal for 'em.

Meanwhile, make a note:  in addition to a generator, plus all of the standby transmission and audio chain equipment it takes to have as a backup to be ready for anything, don't forget that backup encoder too (or when you go off your main audio chain, move your encoder as fast as possible to the redundant system).

At a time when more folks are turning to you for information, don't neglect to work as well to have that usage accurately measured.

Radio Ratings Questions

Richard Harker has been blogging some important questions about the current state of radio ratings (Arbitron, We Have a Question: What Happened to the Button-Pushers?), such as:

When PPM identifies a radio station and then the audio switches to an unidentifiable source, it is recorded as a switch to non-encoded media. No more radio credit is given. But what if the participant really just switched stations, but PPM couldn't identify it? Could this explain lower listening estimates and the absence of button pushers with PPM?

Now, I’d like to add a few more of my own:

Nielsen research from their Lexington diary test earlier this year found cell phone-only households are heavier radio users, while Arbitron has reportedly come to a totally different conclusion. Their new spokesperson told Inside Radio yesterday “There does not appear to be different listening behavior.”

Are the differences based on diary measurement vs metered usage? Or, is there really no difference in radio usage between the kind of people who would not have a land line home phone and those who do? Who’s right? How can we know for sure? Will Nielsen and Arbitron (or the RAB?) fund an academic study of this?

When Nielsen announced their 2009 radio survey in the U.S., they talked about releasing the data in June. Now, company insiders say they are working toward a tentative launch date of August 17, which just happens to be three days after the last Spring 2009 Arbitrons have been released.

Why the change, in spite of the fact that Nielsen’s local market surveys started and ended a month before ARB’s?

Nielsen, it seems, has chosen to have the luxury of seeing ARB’s Spring 2009 local market reports before they give ARB a look at their data in the markets they both have been surveying this spring.

Why keep their Cumulus and Clear Channel subscribers waiting for the data like this? Or, are subscribers seeing the first Nielsen radio data this month and were they a part of the decision to delay the release?

In Canada, where BBM is discontinuing their use of Nielsen TV meters, lowering their client TV station subscriber rates as they embark on using PPM for all media measurement, keeping radio rates the same as they have been for diary surveys (unlike Arbitron which is charging 60% more), diary sample proportionality in market after market is causing hair-raising levels of weighting - making for wild book-to-book swings.

Has BBM already done the replication study I am asking about? Or, are they moving ahead with PPM merely because of the economies of scale for their subscribers?

Confusing as all of this is right now, it's good to see so many different approaches being tried by broadcast researchers.

Once all of this data is available to independent observers in the coming year, we're going know a lot more about what's unquestionably fact .. and what's just preliminary theory.

Driving, Looking Only In The Rear View Mirror

There have been many great articles written in the last several years since Arbitron and BBM started rolling out the Portable People Meter in the U.S. and Canada designed to help programmers and personalities know what to do when their station is monitored by PPM.

This is not going to be one of them.

An extensive high tech cottage industry has emerged providing sophisticated tools for broadcasters to study the behaviors of radio listeners as they listen to radio. BBM has InfoSys, ARB has PDA web, RCS has Media Monitors, Audience Reaction and MScore, ROI has PPM expertise, Cornerstone Research has XTrends, Research Director has Instant Answer, to name just a few.

I must confess: I love and am addicted to them all.

However, having spent hours pouring over reports which tabulate and even can play actual air checks as you graph panelist usage, I also have to say that it all comes down to this:

Bill Drake was right; Rick Sklar was correct; Chuck Blore got it; Mike Joseph understood, to name just s few of radio's very best and most successful programmers.

More than that, they created stations that executed 24/7 like the legends they have become. I bet they’d all do just fine in PPM measurement.

A great programmer intuitively recognizes entertaining, compelling, interesting, engaging, don’t-miss-a-minute radio when she/he hears it.

The trick is not analyzing it, but teaching, training, motivating talent to do it so consistently that listeners notice and a station becomes famous for it, which drives regular usage – several times a day, more days per week than its competition.

If you doubt it, then you absolutely need to get the analytical tools and spend the many hours it will take you to compare what average listeners are doing while we do what we do.

After all, there are only four possible actions as you listen to the radio:

1) turn a station on,
2) turn a station off,
3) change from a station to another one or
4) change from a different station to yours.

All the technology which PPM has enabled, at this point, still makes you wait from eight days to as much as five weeks to compare what radio did to what listeners did.

Perhaps the reason for that lag time is because the suppliers and ratings companies are fearful that we can’t handle to watch it in real time as yet, but you know that day is coming.

There’s no need to wait for that event. I can tell you what you’ll find out:

• Radio listeners love interesting personalities who never bore them, relate to their lives, make them feel connected and never waste their time, who talk to one person about common concerns, not about themselves.
• They want to feel up to date.
• Almost half of them change stations or turn the radio off when irritating commercials which insult their intelligence come on.
• They listen longer and more often to radio stations which they can count on to play fewer commercials than more cluttered ones.
• They like their favorite songs. The change stations when ones they dislike come on.
• They hit their presets when it sounds like a station is taking a break of any kind from what they enjoy for something (anything) else.
• The more entertainment value they receive for time spent the more regularly they come back to a personality or station.

Luckily for all of us, we already have two very useful pieces of equipment which can help improve a station’s performance in PPM, diaries, phone surveys or whatever methods media buyers use to evaluate as they spend their dollars.

Ears.

Use them.

Listen objectively to your station with the same critical thinking skills that radio’s most skillful programming executives have always employed.

You don’t need a device to measure whether your brand is so strong that lots of people have high expectations when they turn to your place on the dial and your implementation is so consistent that you never fail to exceed them.

You do need a person with judgment, communication, the ability to prioritize and motivational skills as well as the strength to fight for the needs of the listener.

Someone who is able to see what’s ahead, on both sides of you as well as what happened last week or last month.

Someone who doesn’t just call him/her self a Program Director, but is one.

Why Are We Doing This?

You have to hand it to Arbitron. Many of their client stations and groups complain that they don't listen or act on suggestions which seem quite sensible, but whether that's true or not, the company certainly does a very impressive job of telling clients and consultants on a consistent basis what they are working on and why. For example, during the latest PPM conference call/update, they released these stats on how PPM ratings compare to diary estimates, so that advertisers can understand the differences between diary audience shares and PPM listening levels.

Radio sales reps have a very difficult job in the PPM markets, as they present weekly AQH persons, AQH shares and cost per point, since before they even start the sales process they must first 're-educate' the buyer on why what they previously paid $100 for is now worth $118 if the target is 18-49, $123 if it's 18-34 and $114 if the client wants to reach 25-54.

All of this is based on the standard measure of radio ratings for at least six or seven decades, the "average quarter hour." Why does five minutes listening inside a quarter hour equal a quarter hour? Once upon a time, radio was programmed in fifteen minute blocks. Advertisers from the 1920's to the 1950's wanted to know how many listeners were tuned into their fifteen minute program. In the late 1940's, the "diary" was invented as a way to measure audiences and the standard of measurement remained the average quarter hour. It's been like that since.

PPM shows radio's many strengths as a medium in so many other ways, in terms of both reach and accountability in a much more believable and granular way than the diary ever could.

Today's PPM is capable of measuring listening behavior down to listening units of a minute or even shorter durations. Canada's BBM is now measuring radio and television audiences and the standard unit will be average minute audiences, which seems to be a more accurate measure, requiring no math to allow an advertiser to know how many folks watched or heard their ad, something they could never have done with diary data.

Isn't it time to stop playing games to get listeners artificially to spend the 'right' twenty minutes inside four quarter hours so that it appears that they listened for an hour? Why not simply drop average quarter hour as the standard for ARB PPM measurement and show how large radio's audience is in every single minute, seven days a week?

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?

Can We Finally Talk About More Consistently Engaging Content?

First, please read Billboard.biz's Ross on Radio column today, Can We Finally Talk About Spotload? by Sean Ross.   Don't read another word here until you fully understand Sean's point.

Under the new thinking, shorter listening stretches became almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. The brief moment in which a top 40’s power rotation could  be 45 minutes has mostly passed. But there’s still an emphasis on instant gratification—e.g., all-news stations with traffic every four minutes, even if it means sending people on their way sooner.  But how many more occasions can you get from listeners if the three places where they might have consumed radio are down to one, in some cases? “At home” is diminished by the competition from morning TV and, increasingly, by the lack of a radio at home. “At work,” the usage that lends itself to long listening stretches, is threatened by other choices that offer even more continuous music and fewer interruptions.

Don't think that just because you read that paragraph it's really now OK to read on.

No.

I want you to click on that link above and read his entire piece, so that you are fully aware that I agree with him as far as he goes but also believe he's totally missing something more obvious and even more important.

To make my point, I want to share this graphic being used in presentations all over Canada on PPM listening lengths by Catherine KellyVice-President/Western Region for BBM.

It's a view of life at breakfast time at Catherine's house.  She undocks her meter, turns on her radio and starts to get the family ready to face their days.

One of her kids is slow to get out of bed, so she has to go up to his room at least twice before he comes down ready to go.  The dog needs a walk.  She's busy and moving all over the house.

In about 45 minutes her PPM listening is broken into four sessions totalling 39 minutes.

The radio stations she's using could stop for commercials whenever they want.  They can tease as enticingly as they desire.  They could cut their commercial loads.  They could hyper-spin her favorite songs, and none of those things will impact the reasons she's leaving the radio and coming back to it.

It's about what she's doing, not about what we are doing.

Here's the deal on the “9-10 Minute” myth of the "average" occasion length, as Kelly explains:

• Much has been made about the 10 minute attention span of radio listeners – apparently brought about by insights from PPM.

• When looking at number of listening events and average session length, it is consistent to see a session length of between 9 and 11 minutes.

• Keep in mind, these numbers are averages – they include people who listen for 30 minutes and people who listen for 3 minutes.

In fact, here's the math:  if you break session length into quantiles of usage, the session for the average "heavy user" is 35 minutes.

Meanwhile, if you calculate the "mode," the most frequently-occurring number in that nine-ten minute average is actually 2:30.  Two and a half minutes.

That's why moving the average is so difficult, not because we play too many bad songs or too many commercials.

Sure, it makes your PPM ratings better if you play the best songs and minimize interruptions for the switching audience, which absolutely changes stations while they are in the car each time anything they don't like comes on, but MScore, AirplayIntel and other PPM-based music research is based on tracking only the "switching" audience, those folks who switch from one station to another.

That's only half of the total audience.

The other half isn't tracked by that approach because their listening goes from "you" to "off" and from "off" to "you."

Those are your most loyal listeners and yet the PPM-based music research doesn't measure their usage.

Rather than focusing so much on eliminating reasons why people change stations, it's just as important to figure out what things you do bring those people back and do those things more often.

"Presumptions Are Holding Us Back"

Catherine Kelly, VP/Western Region for BBM Canada made that statement recently during a day-long session with the Lower Mainland media sales and buying community which was laden with thought-provoking trends and stats.

"One of the largest values with PPM data, yet largely unexplored, is the ability to really get to know your audience and how people use your media. In Radio, we’re still dealing with dayparts that were defined by a methodology designed to measure it…rather than using our new methodology to help us design better stations, campaigns and advertising.

"It is unrealistic to look at old behaviour models and expect that they will continue to apply. 18-24 is the one demo that BBM receives the most questions and concerns about – whether the market or station is measured by diary or PPM. Every research company has issues with A18-24.

"PPM has these:

• Docking – I’m out late and I don’t dock til’ tomorrow
• Females – I couldn’t find a way to wear it with my dress
• CONTACT!!!! – reaching these people is IMPOSSIBLE
• And of course…..“Uhm…I (lost it, dropped it in the toilet/pool/shower/lake, had it but can’t find it, forgot it, left it in my friends car…..)”

"This is Reality…

"The 18-24 year olds THEMSELVES drive variability in audience numbers. They go in and out of the sample quicker and more often than older more ‘stable’ panelists.

"During these years, an 18-24 can experience one or more of these, perhaps several times, all within a year:

• Leave to go to school
• Then come back to parents house for summer
• Leave again
• Get a job, quit a job
• Buy a car, write off a car, etc.

"Nevermind what they can do over the course of 7 years..

"It is often assumed that radio listening and television viewing is a daily habit with slight variability over time. However, when you look at minute, hourly, daily, weekly and monthly data for 18-24 year olds, its clear that variability is the norm for this age group.

"Other factors that contribute: Co-Listening/Co-Viewing. Don’t forget that PPM captures ‘exposure’ and that means there are instances of co-listening or viewing, that are going to occur.

"This is particularly true during ‘holiday’ periods where the likelihood of an A18-24 being in a co-viewing/listening environment increases.

"Market events affect 18-24 year olds and drive variability in audience numbers. (psst..this is true of all demos!)

"Consider the following, especially when examining this group:

• What time of year is it?
• Did this happen last year?
• What could be happening in their lives?
• Market?
• Other media?"


Some folks will say that it must be "be nice to a ratings company day" at Breakfast Blog as I recap this, since I more tend more often to tweek our associates in the media research business given my innate and deeply ingrained sympathies with our programmers, talent and sellers.

However, anyone who shares an abode with an 18-24, a teen or a 25-34 knows that what she's telling us - like it or not - has considerable inconvenient truth in it.

It's time to learn new selling strategies.

The Canary Has A Name

The canary in radio ratings' coal mine's name is Sean Hannity.

In a cover story interview this week, the syndicated talker tells Radio Ink "one of the problems with radio in general, and this impacts all formats, is that in the last 10 years, our lives, in terms of technology, have changed dramatically. Radio needs to wake up to this fact. It’s the single biggest threat to the radio business today — that is, the measurement system is flawed in a dramatic way."

Hannity believes he has millions of digital listeners he is not able to get credit for.  "For example, in New York, if you’re listening to The Sean Hannity Radio Show on the WOR website, even if you have a Portable People Meter, I can’t get credit for that. We know that WABC, at times, had well over 1.4 million people listening online. If we can’t get credit for that, then all the data that’s being put out there is just inaccurate. Then you add to that those people who listen to me on satellite. That’s unmeasured. If people listen on my website, that’s not measured. I’m a big proponent of iHeart-Radio, but that’s also unmeasured. What we have is a situation where, especially in big cities, it’s almost impossible to get an AM signal, and for the people listening to my show, and they are, there is no way that we can get credit."  Hannity says. he knows for a fact he has millions of online listeners. "I have never seen it below a couple of million people. Ever. This is not a small issue. This is a massive issue."

Sean was an early believer and user of PPM and spoke in 2007 to the annual consultants' fly-in about how he was using the Media Monitors and custom audience flow reports tracking of his show to hone content, so I can testify that he's an extremelty knowledgeable voice on the subject who has been digging deep into PPM data from the beginning.

Also, the responses to his views on Radio Ink's website are generally chirping in agreement:

The current reporting method stations are using for on-line listening is difficult to work with or believe at best. This problem requires a good solution from Nielsen...now.
- Dick Kalt

I say again -- add PPM encoder to your internet streams. This is not shocking revelation.  Parsing streaming server logs is also a trivial matter, albeit you don't get the same demographic data as PPM.
- Joe Cassara

This is an "Elephant in the room" issue for radio. What exactly is being done about it? Nothing yet.
- Iconoclast

For the first time in my life, Hannity and I agree on something. To the earlier comment, server logs are flawed too and subject to manipulation. - Fred Lundgren

I have written about this shortcoming, citing what Canada's BBM is doing for genuine cross-media measurement.  When ARB was radio and Nielsen was TV, using server logs was the only option open to Arbitron.

Now that Nielsen measures both TV and radio with PPM, they can do much better than 6%, as Sean Hannity clearly understands.

$1.3 Billion Is A Lot Of Money

With the approval of Nielsen's takeover of Arbitron, it's dubious that anyone thinks that broadcaster costs are going down anytime soon.

So, since it's fait accompli, let's at least inventory what I hope we all get for the money.

First, thanks to Wired's Tom Valderbilt, some history:

In the years after its founding in Chicago in 1923, the A.C. Nielsen Company thrived, thanks to a commitment to math and technology. While its competitors called random households and asked them what they happened to be listening to on the radio at that moment, Nielsen developed more sophisticated sampling methods. Rather than rely solely on self-reporting, Nielsen employed a device called the Audimeter that used photographic tape to automatically record listening activity. When television arrived, Nielsen used similar meters for viewing—although they were supplemented with paper diaries. But by the late 1950s, Nielsen sat comfortably atop the media-ratings industry. It had few competitors, and since television habits remained static, it had little reason to keep innovating.

Under the terms of the FTC’s approval, as Variety Digital Editor Todd Spangler reports Nielsen must continue to support Project Blueprint, the cross-platform project measuring TV, radio, PC, mobile and tablet engagement that ESPN has been working on with Arbitron and comScore, so perhaps Nielsen CEO David Calhoun's statement (“We are looking forward to providing all of the benefits of the combined company to our new clients in the radio industry and their advertisers, driving incremental value for them as well as our shareholders.”) means that we will all be getting more for the money, better, more reliable data to reflect a more mobile media world.

• Will Nielsen households increase from 25,000 to 75,000 (the national PPM radio panel) at no additional cost to current subscribers?
• Will the increased sample size permit cross-media usage measurement like BBM Canada has been doing since they implemented PPM in 2009, displacing Nielsen's TV measurement?
• Will sample weighting decrease, increasing reliability?
• Will PPM be extended to all TV markets now measured by Nielsen so that radio in those markets gets PPM data at no additional cost?

Skeptics abound, so all eyes will be on Nielsen, starting, perhaps this week, at AdWeek 2013.

After a late 2008 announcement that 50 Cumulus markets were to be measured by Nielsen and a revelation 18 months later that Cumulus CEO Lou Dickey was pleased with the results, the industry never actually saw that public release of the data which was promised, first in June of that year, then later in August and then ultimately Cumulus did not renew their deal with Neilsen, so you'll pardon me if I am fearful.

In February 2010 at Country Radio Seminar, Clear Channel Senior VP/Research Jess Hanson and I attempted to get representatives of the two ratings giants to "take the gloves off," but it turned into a gentle confrontation as then-CEO of Arbitron, Michael Skarzynski ended up a no-show, replaced by the able fencer Dr. Ed Cohen, but Nielsen Media Research's managing director for North America Lorraine Hadfield was ill-equipped to talk competing methodologies with the experienced researcher and stuck to her talking points, meaning that what was billed as a barn-burner actually turned into a good session to catch a nap, which is probably the way both of them had hoped it would be.

Ultimately, as Wired's Vanderbilt wrote, if I may adapt and paraphrase him a bit: "It all adds up to a potentially thrilling new era for radio, television and new media, one that values shows that spark conversations, not just those that hook us for 30 minutes (for TV and just 11 PPM minutes for radio). The stakes are high: Get it right and great programming will continue to thrive. Get it wrong and both the $70 billion television industry and the $16 billion radio business will be in jeopardy—along with your favorite radio station, personality and TV show."

Hopefully, Neilsen makes the most of their huge investment in the future of all U.S. media ratings by improving the value of what they deliver to clients and media buyers .. and wastes no time in doing so.

Maintaining Listener Loyalty

1. Be consistent.  Unfamiliarity is almost always a negative.  Surround it with the familiar, so it appears as a pleasant surprise, an expected part of the overall presentation.
2. Be the soundtrack of your listener’s life.
3. It’s a 140 character, 17 second, society.  Be brief.  Respect the listener’s time.
4. Be a companion and friend, never an announcer.  Avoid phrase patterns and verbal crutches.
5. Cluster music into long sets.  Control commercial content. 
6. Hopefully, you can play fewer commercials than your direct competition.  If not, your only winning option is longer stopsets and fewer of them, placed equally on both sides of quarter hours, equidistant from each other in the hour if you’re being measured by Nielsen PPM methodology.  If it’s BBM PPM, the station with the strongest content and the least minutes of potential tune outs wins.  If it’s diaries that make up your ratings, place commercial breaks so that you hold your listener for 35 minutes, equalling four “quarter hours.”  If it’s a phone survey, top of kindness wins.  Use telephone in your contesting and have the biggest, best prizes and promotions.
7. Two five unit breaks per hour is ideal.
8. Count units, not minutes.  From the listener’s point of view, intros, outros, :30s, :60s, and even “mentions” are all commercials.
9. Play only hits.  Never add a song until you believe it’s going to be a hit.
10. Play “clutter busters” once every quarter with your staff.  Make a list of the least popular bits, benchmarks and programs you air from the talent’s perspective and then test them with listeners in an online survey or focus groups.  Drop unpopular ones.
11. Promote, but never HYPE.  Do what you say and offer proof.

Listing these things is easy.  DOING them is hard.  Odds are, your owner or manager will expect you to win loyalty while stinting on some of them.

That's why we believe you need a consultant.  You can sometimes win while cutting a few of these corners, but if you need to constantly and predictably do so.

There's only one way to do that.

To constantly dominate a market position, be uncompromising when it comes to all listener loyalty drivers.

And, Then, They Came For Us

As World War II era Pastor Martin Niemöller's prescient quote implies, it's human nature for a majority group which feels unaffected by even extremely-egregious unfairness to ignore the concerns of their neighbors until it comes knocking.

Thus, since in most PPM-rated markets the country format has been doing pretty well, it has been tempting to ignore the complaints from minority radio owners and simply bask in the glow of our format's huge cumes and share growth.

At May's BCAB convention, for example, BBM CEO Jim McCleod noted in pre-currency tests of PPM in Vancouver it appeared country listening will go from a seven share of diary tuning to potentially more than a nine.

Now, one month before fast-growing and increasingly-ethnic San Diego goes currency with PPM, it has been concerning to watch as ARB appears in rumored pre-currency data to be having trouble locating the same percentage of core country radio listeners for the PPM panel as they had in the diary sample.

Unless something changes fast, country's audience share in San Diego could dip from the sevens to the fives.

Questions: are the population estimates which drive sample proportionality, now nine years away from the last census, accurate? Or, will they reflect a major change in the estimates when the 2010 census rolls into the ARB data in two years? What will that say about today's shares? Will panel management over the next few weeks pick up more country ultra core which seems to be missing in the pre-currency data we've seen thus far? What impact will that have on San Diego country radio owners Lincoln Financial Media and Clear Channel revenue projections as they budget for 2010 right now?

Suddenly, what seemed to be the worries of others have come to the country format's door in at least this one market where non-ethnic households have become a minority group.

When former ARB SVP/Ratings Services Jay Guyther blogs from his new post at ROI Media Solutions that this same issue has been on the back burner for 15 years at Arbitron and says "...leave the FCC, Attorneys General, Congress, MRC, etc. out of it. Increase the panel sizes to a sufficient size and most of the other problems, in my opinion, will go away..." it is long past time for action to replace homeostasis.

You Go First

Sean Ross (Why The Audience Now Wants Shorter Breaks) initiated not just a great conversation last week but the savvy and experienced folks adding comments since that time simply can't be ignored!

However, I'm not yet convinced.

Back when John Hayes ran Corus and Canada was just starting with PPM, with the help of the brilliant Bob Michaels (I STILL miss him so much - a smart researcher and a wonderful communicator!), all Corus stations were mandated to do six two minute breaks and promote that they go back to the music faster than anyone else.

Finally, after more than a year of disappointing ratings all of the Corus music stations went to two six minute breaks per hour and the ratings improved almost immediately across the board.

In Canada, BBM doesn't use "five minutes equals a quarter hour" as Nielsen Audio does, so it's absolutely a "most minutes" wins game and all of the Canadian country stations we work with are doing exceedingly well right now sticking with the "hour glass" or "bow tie" approach, so I'm welcoming anyone else who wants to take the Edison Researcher's advice and "go first."

My sense is that this is a case of perception vs actual habits.

TV commercials are all run at the same times so that viewers then are forced to choose their favorite shows based on the content not the commercial load and I believe that the same is true with radio when the measurement is PPM.

The major consolidated US group owners have shown me by their actions in PPM that it's possible for one station to play at least one minute more commercial time than a direct competitor and still win by carefully placing their clusters to maximize the time measured by the PPM, which like your cell phone "knows what time it is," so a few seconds can be the same as a minute depending where a tune-in or tune-out happens.  Thanks to Nielsen Audio's editing rules, that minute in the right place can be credited as a full quarter hour (or also cost you one if it's improperly placed).

Perception still drives expectations, which does make listeners go to one station "first" over another, but when at that station "time matters" much more than perceptions, I maintain.  Great content drives usage in the moment much more than the image that if I am patient I'll hear more of what I want in the long term.

Each "stop" causes a huge loss in the "switcher" audience and the more times per hour that happens the stronger that image of "it's worth waiting for something terrific" must be, my current experience still indicates.

How about you?  Ready to go first?