Arbitron commercializes PPM two days early

[davideduardo]

I still have to disagree with you on the "voting" vs. "rounding" method. How else do you explain when people are rabid fans of a show (Like Tom Leykis for example) they say they listen from 3p-7p EVERY DAY.

Before I answer, I have to ask how many diary reviews you have made in Columbia... or Laurel... or Beltsville. Otherwise, how do you know what is in each diary?

Many fans of particular shows write in diaries that they listen for the whole show or many hours. What the PPM does is eliminate rounding, the times a person was away from the radio, etc. Nobody who fills in a diary writes that they stopped listening for 10 minutes to go to the bathroom; the PPM does register this if the meter is actually worn.

I have seen little evidence of "voting" and lots of evidence of simple human nature which rounds listening which occured from 9:10 to 9:50 into "9 to 10" in a diary.

In the Hispanic and Urban market, people are more loyal to their station and culture and when they get a diary, they "vote" for their favorite station.

In fact, Hispanic listeners are less loyal than any other group, and Arbitron has mentioned this repeatedly. As a group they change stations more times a day, and change P1 station more often than any other.

You are right on national and regional buys that the results are hard to track, but on local it certainly is, and if you are an advertiser and not tracking what works and what doesn't, you are wasting your money.

Unless you only advertise on one station, there is really no way to test response. The key is intelligently matching the medium and individual outlet to your business or product. That is not a radio station's responsability.