Nielsen to Weight for Headphone Listening

[davideduardo]

Per Inside Radio:

"After years of complaints that Nielsen’s Portable People Meters don’t adequately measure radio listening occurring on headphones, the ratings provider announced Tuesday that it will adjust its audience estimates to account for headphone listening to encoded AM, FM, and HD-multicast station streams, starting with the October 2020 survey."

http://www.insideradio.com/free/aft...cle_861868a4-ecdf-11ea-a4a1-03aeadab8650.html

This means that, per a study that measured headphone listening will be adjusted significantly upwards to reflect those panelists who do not connect the meter to the headphone. The study set the basis for the upward adjustment so that it more accurately reflects actual usage which all experts agree is very under-reported.

 

[TheBigA]

There were a lot of small details in that article that make me wonder about this. They will adjust based on demographics. Younger people are more likely to used headphones than older people. then there's this:

The 5,000-person survey found that the largest piece of radio listening (78.3%) occurs over the air with no headphones, followed by streaming without headphones (12.3%), then streaming with wireless headphones (4.0%) and streaming with wired headphones (3.5%).

So this says to me that streamers are more likely to use headphones than OTA listeners. The article doesn't say where people are most likely to use headphones (home or away). But I'm sure they have that number.