WINNIPEG – CAB Convention delegates this (Sunday) afternoon heard BBM Canada president and CEO Jim MacLeod and Arbitron senior vice-president Bob Patchen present research showing that broadcast radio, when measured by portable people meters, transforms into a reach medium.
During their afternoon session at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters annual convention, MacLeod and Patchen pinpointed the differences, positive and negative, when comparing ratings data gathered by the traditional diaries versus the new PPMs. While the diaries are low-tech written reports, the PPMs, as most know, are little pager-like devices which record digital audio signatures when the wearer is watching TV or listening to radio. That data is then downloaded when the wearer docks the thing for the night.
Under the diary, the radio morning show matters a whole lot more than when measured with a PPM. And with the diary, radio has fewer listeners who listen longer.
The PPM, instead, shows far more total listeners, but they listen less than the diaries reported. The PPM also reveals far better results when it comes to the elusive 18-24 demographic, as well.
And with the PPMs, bounce – where ratings swing wildly from one book to the next – disappears. “And bounce can cost hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars,” adds MacLeod, because when successfully-rated stations go through a bad book, for example, they lose revenue on discounts, waiting for the inevitable bounce back in the next ratings period.
But, with no bounce, stations will have to actually believe the numbers now, too.
Arbitron is completing another PPM test in Houston, Texas with two panels of 1,050 people each. What they’ve found has confirmed other similar tests, like in Philadelphia, the U.K. and BBM’s Montreal data, that “reach is much, much, higher,” said Patchen. “Cume ratings double for radio, but TSL (time spent listening) is lower than the diary.”
Since diaries rely on recall and panelists often guess at when and where they listened, the number of stations reported in a diary is also far lower than what PPMs show. The data says people actually listen to twice as many stations than they report in the diaries.
Weekend listening, long thought of as dead time by radio broadcasters has been shown to be anything but as the PPM data shows people listen to almost 50% more radio on Saturday and Sunday than they had been reporting, said both Patchen and MacLeod.
And the practice of “starting the hour with power” is a waste of time, too. Diaries show people listening to radio in 15-minute chunks, most often starting at the top of an hour. The PPM shows that the times people begin listening is evenly split throughout any hour.
Another neat aspect of the PPM data, when cross-referenced with the TV data it also measures, is that it can tell program directors what TV shows its listeners are most interested in – and then can advise their on-air staff just what shows they should be talking about. The data can also tell the marketing department just what TV channels they would have best success advertising on.
Arbitron is also working in concert with large retailers as well. The retailers put a sound-emitting device in their stores which is recorded on the PPM and can cross-reference what TV shows and radio stations their heavy-shoppers like, and can also somewhat gauge the success of an ad campaign if PPM wearers come to the stores in higher numbers during certain promotions.
That’s some ROI (return on investment) right there – something media buyers are demanding.
The data that is really shaking some in the industry, however, is the difference between what the diary and the PPMs say when it comes to AM drive-time. While the diaries have always showed a large spike in the mornings, which has led to higher ad rates (and some nice salaries for those working then), the PPM data shows no such spike whatsoever.
“This has got severe implications for the industry,” said MacLeod. “Buyers will attempt to discount audiences in the mornings now,” he added. “The key is how to get it back in the other time blocks,” he said, like evenings and weekends, which show far greater listenership with PPMs than with diaries.
PPM data from Montreal, for example, showed listenership at 80% on Saturdays and 75% on Sundays, where past diary results showed 53.8% and 45.6%, respectively.
So if all this shows “radio is now a reach medium,” said Patchen, what now?
“Radio is going to be sold differently,” predicted MacLeod. PPMs will let PDs see immediately, next-day for example, the effect of a format change. Retailers will be tied directly to those results and recording ratings by the quarter-hour is probably soon to be a thing of the past, he added (later saying a full switch to per-minute ratings is not what he’d like to see).
“PPMs will give you the knowledge to build a better station,” concluded MacLeod.
