Meter System Upgrades Arbitron's Ratings Measurement.

[kevinsealy]

Dave Hinckley's Radio Column reports in today's Daily News that Arbitron is switching from the traditional write dairies to a devise called the (PPM) Personal People Meter.

Without sending in monthly dairies, the PPM worn by the listener sends info to Arbitron what station (s) the wearer has on on.

With this technology, Arbitron would get ratings in quicker as opposed to the traditional method.

Houston is the first market to use the PPM. By the fall Abitrend Part 2 all of New York should get this new devise.




Thanks,
Kevin L. Sealy

 

[davideduardo]

Dave Hinckley's Radio Column reports in today's Daily News that Arbitron is switching from the traditional write dairies to a devise called the (PPM) Personal People Meter.

Without sending in monthly dairies, the PPM worn by the listener sends info to Arbitron what station (s) the wearer has on on.

With this technology, Arbitron would get ratings in quicker as opposed to the traditional method.

Houston is the first market to use the PPM. By the fall Abitrend Part 2 all of New York should get this new devise.

Here are a few comments on the PPM.

1. Each station encodes by transmitting a microburst that is inaudible multiple times a minute. Each station, radio, tv, cable, satellite, stream, encodes with a unique code.

2. The PPM has a microphone. It records each code burst with a time and date stamp all day. If it can hear the audio, it records data.

3. At night, the PPM, which is the size of a pager, docks and calls home and downloads the user's data.

4. The PPM has a motion sensor. If it does not move in certain patterns, that day is eliminated from the sample.

5. The PPM talks to the base by radio when in the home. That way it knows if it is home or away to get listening location.

6. The PPM was tested nearly two years in Philadelphia (2004-2005), and then again since 2005 in Houston. It is also in use, real time, in Canada by the BBM.

7. The share results from Philly and Houston are very close to the diary method results. The big discovery of the Philly test is that the diary is very accurate.

8. The PPM costs a lot more to stations, and is gaining acceptance because advertisers and agencies want more immediate data and a larger sample over a shorter time.

9. In a market with 30,000 diaries a year, there will only be a total of around 3,000 PPM panelists.

10. The whole family participates. If any member fails to participate, the whole unit is changed.

11. The panel is perfectly balanced on all stratification variables at all times, unlike the diary. For this reason, daily ratings are as accurate as monthly or 3-month periods.PPM panelists can stay active up to 2 years. A diary keeper is good for 7 days.

12. A new "book" comes out every month, 13 times a year. There are condensed weeklies. Monthlies can go down to the hour level for a single day.

I hope this answers some of the questions.

The rollout started with Philly, next will be Houston, and the New York City market for Fall of 2007. LA comes Winter 2008, and there is a roll out schedule on the Arbitron website.

 

[RickSklar77]

David,

A very informative post, as most of yours are.

I will bring up one point, however. The PPM has shown a significant decrease in time-spent-listening when compared to the paper diary. This has had an adverse affect on ratings (not shares) for radio stations when a side-by-side comparison is made.

As all good programmers know:

• A share is the percentage of people who listen to the radio in a given period of time.
• A rating is the percentage of the overall population of the market who listen in a given period of time
• A quarter-hour is a quarter-hour regardless of its "source". And mathematically, the only two "sources" of ratings are cume and TSL.
  

So while shares may be similar, the PPM has shown that people spend less time actually listening to radio than they say they do when filling out a diary. That drives the rating down, but may keep shares flat.

Make sense, or am I high and over-thinking it?

R.

 

[davideduardo]

David,

A very informative post, as most of yours are.

I will bring up one point, however. The PPM has shown a significant decrease in time-spent-listening when compared to the paper diary. This has had an adverse affect on ratings (not shares) for radio stations when a side-by-side comparison is made.

As all good programmers know:

So while shares may be similar, the PPM has shown that people spend less time actually listening to radio than they say they do when filling out a diary. That drives the rating down, but may keep shares flat.

Make sense, or am I high and over-thinking it?

R.

You are correct, but, to paraphrase Paul Harvey, you need to know the rest of the story.

The PPM picks up two kinds of radio usage the diary generally does not show.
1. Short term tune-ins that are not remembered when filling a diary.
2. Hearing as opposed to listening... that is, the times one is exposed to a station they did not select.

In fact, the new name for TSL is WATE or Weekly Average Time Exposed.

So, with this, cumes go up, and the average weekly number of stations used nearly doubles... but with mostly light listening. So the TSL goes down, cume goes up, and the share, and thus, the AQH persons, stays about the same.

P1 listeners (and I was aparticipant in the Philly test and am currently int he Houston one) listen about as much as always. It's the additon of those P4, P5, P6, P7, P8 stations that affects the averages... but the end result is similar listening levels to radio and to each station.

The Houston PPM results are posted on www.arbitron.com. Compare the 12+ with the published diary 12+ results, also available there.