Arbitron’s Jon Miller breaks down his company’s PPM ratings to show how every minute a listener tunes in can affect your station’s ratings. Miller takes a look at the math behind quarter-hour ratings and how just a few extra minutes of listening can pay dividends in the bigger picture
Jon Miller
By Jon Miller
When Arbitron introduced the PPM radio ratings service in 2007, industry experts and programmers alike declared that the rules of the game had changed. Indeed they had. Over the past 5 years we have collectively learned more about how radio is consumed and how audiences react to content than we had in decades. PPM truly changed the game, with almost instantaneous feedback flowing daily, weekly, and monthly into 48 individual markets.
But one rule remains constant among both of Arbitron’s ratings services: a listener must log 5 minutes inside a quarter-hour in order to receive credit. The only difference in PPM is that the 5 minutes may be cumulative (any combination of listening that adds up to 5 minutes) – with Diary methodology the 5 minutes must be contiguous, or unbroken.
This is the great bargain that broadcasters have been getting for decades – 5 minutes gets you credit for 15. And thanks to PPM we now have millions of data points that reveal how exposure works on a minute-level basis. How many listeners (as represented by Arbitron PPM panelists) are listening to your station, but not hitting the 5-minute threshold in a quarter hour? Put another way: How many listeners does your station reach but is not converting into ratings credit?
In the Fall of 2009, Arbitron studied the top 15 stations in the top ten markets looking for insights about how panelists react to spot loads. The study found, among other things, that the average station could increase its AQH share approximately 30% simply by getting all listeners who had been exposed to the station at some point during the week, to spend the required 5 minutes during the quarter-hour. That number may shock you, and probably should. Here’s what you need to keep in mind:
Remember the rules of the game: 5 minutes inside the quarter-hour. Unchanged from Diary. But the monumental difference with PPM’s passive measurement is Arbitron now captures all kinds of short-duration exposures. Every time a panelist tunes to a station for more than a couple of seconds, the meter captures the code. Each one of those exposures is a small victory for you – you’ve gotten the listener in the door to the radio station. Then comes the harder part, keeping them there long enough to fill up the Arbitron 5-minute parking meter.
Let’s go back to that 30% number. We should consider that no matter what we do as programmers there are going to be listeners who are simply not going to hit the 5-minute threshold to qualify for ratings credit. Fickle habits, life happening, phones ringing, commutes ending, etc etc…a million different reasons why someone doesn’t stay with the station long enough. Most of these things are out of our control. But what if we zeroed in on the panelists who are just below the threshold, who are almost being counted but missing by just one minute?
What would one more minute do for my share?
Recently Arbitron has been studying panelists who are just below the 5-minute threshold – within a minute of receiving credit. We are finding that in the average case, a 10-15% increase in share is possible simply by converting these listeners who have logged 4 minutes inside the quarter-hour, to 5.
Focusing on these listeners may be a more realistic way to convert short-duration cume into quarter hour credit.
Another way of looking at these listeners is they are existing audience that just hasn’t been realized (or credited). They aren’t new audience or new cume that must be marketed to in order to find the station – these listeners are already on the radio station, already coming in the door. All you have to do is just squeeze another minute out of them. Put another way, next time you or your talent are on the air, what could you do to convince someone to hang for just another 60 seconds of their day?
Ultimately, knowing the rules of the game can allow you to shape tactics, imaging and your clock to maximize ratings credit. In a world that wants to make the most of resources and reduce waste, we should apply the same mentality to the radio audience. Make every minute count.
Jon Miller is Director of Programming Services for Arbitron Inc. He can be contacted at Jon.miller@arbitron.com
