Pierre Bouvard
The era of electronic measurement is upon radio as Arbitron rolls out the second “currency” Portable People Meter ratings in Houston. With PPM, radio stations, agencies and advertisers are now finding new ground in the process for buying and selling radio commercial time and as the basis for making programming decisions. For a look inside the new PPM numbers, FMQB caught up with the master of the new electronic measurement device, Arbitron President, Sales and Marketing Pierre Bouvard.
eQB presents excerpts from the FMQB August Magazine Cover Story featuring Arbitron President, Sales and Marketing Pierre Bouvard
On whether the era of rankings by AQH share is on its final leg once PPM is commonplace across the country…
AQH ratings and shares will always have a role in the sales process, but the increased reach that PPM shows for stations is one way that radio can help break itself out of the sales doldrums. As radio becomes more comfortable thinking about itself in terms of PPM cume audience, stations will be able to compare themselves more directly to other media. As media buyers look at the entire scope of available media on comparable scales, radio shines in reach. If all you look at is AQH Share, that narrows the competitive field just to other radio stations.
On how PPM results may affect programmers…
This isn’t all that different from the diary (which is an excellent tool for capturing P1 listening!) The difference in PPM is that programmers will get audience information at a more frequent and more granular level. Programmers will be able to make adjustments to their strategies and see the results in the PPM Weekly reports.
On the new PPM metric – Average Weekly Time Exposed – that replaces time spent listening…
AWTE is an acknowledgement of the passive nature of PPM measurement. There’s a subtle difference between what a listener will write down in their diary and what the PPM automatically records without any conscious intervention by the respondent. In the diary world, TSL could be considered a surrogate for loyalty. In a PPM world, programmers will need to understand the AWTE thresholds for the behavior of the audience that is exposed to their station more frequently.
On why individual station cumes were larger than the diary method showed…
Thanks to the passive nature of PPM, cumes should be larger. That’s because whatever a respondent can hear, a PPM will record and report. For years, radio programmers have worried about a phenomenon called “phantom cume.” PDs were convinced that they had more listeners than the diary was reporting. The PPM says the phantom cume is real. But phantom cume cuts both ways. If some other station’s listener wasn’t writing down your station, that also means your listeners were not writing down their own “phantom” stations. The difference shows up in Average Weekly Time Exposed to individual stations. A respondent’s total radio time is being divided among six stations instead of just three. The P1 station still comes out on top, but there’s a lot more station “sampling” going on than we once believed.
On how PPM will help radio sales staffs…
PPM shows radio listening is stronger in dayparts outside of morning drive. This will allow sales people to put more dayparts into their proposed schedules, and help convince the management they should invest more in programming beyond morning drive. The changes we are likely to see include: No more “big money Thursdays” because there is no more “first day” of the diary. No more 10 minute long commercial pods in the 2nd and 4th quarter hours, because the PPM says that people don’t just tune to radio at the top of the hour. That also means no more playing the big hit at the top of the hour either. People tune into radio in equal numbers no matter which quarter of the programming hour you look at.
On the response from the advertising community to the PPM…
The concept of PPM is what’s exciting to the agencies. Now radio is on the same playing field as big market local television stations, and new internet media. To an agency, electronic measurement makes your numbers more reliable and more accountable. My advice to radio stations — don’t let agencies take advantage of the transition to knock down your rates. Your commercial schedules are even MORE valuable because the measurement system used to judge the audience delivery is more valid, more credible and more useful. Hold your ground. Stick to your rate card.
On how PPM will let programmers know more about their community’s tastes…
In the diary world, specific programming events were “averaged” out, since any one day in the quarterly survey was only reported by one twelfth of the sample. Since the whole PPM panel is available for reporting each and every day, you can reliably look at a single event on a single day to see how listeners responded to a giveaway, a concert promotion, a remote or a special guest.
On the PPM possibly favoring certain formats and serve a role in format flip decisions…
In terms of providing actionable information for radio programmers, the PPM is “format neutral.” As long as Arbitron does a good job of properly representing the market in our PPM in-tab samples, every programmer, no matter what format, will have a valuable source of programming insights that we will update weekly. The initial “news” coming out of Philadelphia was the enhanced performance of ‘Rock’ oriented formats. While we have confidence in the reliability of the PPM audience estimates we are releasing, I must caution your readers that all local markets and the radio stations in each are different. With only two PPM markets “online” – Philadelphia and Houston– it’s too early to come to far-reaching and universal assumptions about what the PPM says in terms of formats.
On a timetable for expansion to other markets…
Let’s get the top ten markets up and running first. Then we’ll work as hard as we can to get the rest of the top 50 markets up and running. If you compare our electronic measurement rollout schedule to how fast the TV industry got their top 50 markets metered, you’ll see that we are running at breakneck speed. That said; we are already testing electronic measurement alternatives for markets beyond the top 50. The media landscape is dynamic and the rate at which it is consumed and the platforms that emerge may provide us with additional opportunities going forward.
On what the PPM looks like beyond the top markets…
When you sit down with the broadcasters beyond the top 100 markets, they will tell you they don’t need fancier ratings, but they do need qualitative information to sell the local accounts, so you might see three things going on. The top 50 markets are strict PPM, the middle size markets would be what I call “survey PPM,” where you have an electronic meter but instead of wearing it for nine months, you only wear it for a month, and that is a way to get electronic measurement at a more affordable price. And then for the smaller markets, we may need to beef up our qualitative. Sitting here today I don’t know if we can say all 300 markets will be electronic, but we are certainly going to look if there are ways to measure more markets electronically in a more affordable manner.
** QB Content by Michael Parrish **
