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faderraider
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Does "Arbitron" use stationary meters to check on what stations auto radios are set on? I wondered that yesterday while driving through the "Tip Tunnel" while listening to WZLX.
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No, they don't.
I heard a decade or so ago about a competing ratings service that tried installing roadside detectors to ascertain what stations were being heard in passing cars. The problem is that advertisers want to know who's listening, and roadside boxes counting cars have no access to that information. This ratings service was not a success.
Because the Arbitron PPM is attached to a specific person, it knows who each listener is as well as the stations he or she chooses.
I heard a decade or so ago about a competing ratings service that tried installing roadside detectors to ascertain what stations were being heard in passing cars. The problem is that advertisers want to know who's listening, and roadside boxes counting cars have no access to that information. This ratings service was not a success.
Because the Arbitron PPM is attached to a specific person, it knows who each listener is as well as the stations he or she chooses.
4CX1000A said:
Choice has nothing to do with it. Under PPM, all Arbitron knows is what stations the panelist was *exposed* to.
Under these parameters, you actively purchased every consumer product on every billboard you pass on the way to & from work each day. You saw & read each message, and actively procured the product.
You can see why some would claim it to be unreliable data.
Whatever station is played in the mall...you listened to this Holiday season. Whether you did, or not. Why do you think everyone goes Xmas? HUGE false boost.
4CX1000A said:
what? public DMV records.a cam OCRing plates accompanies LO frequency-counter. cars also leak lots of other info - IMEI numbers from ONStar and phones chatting up cell towers. Bluetooth and Wifi mac-addresses sent out in probes looking for networks.
you could also do your basic fourier vector-similarity stuff a la Shazam/Gracenote/Echonest to sniff the audio leaing out of cars at a quieter spot like an intersection where cars are stopped waiting for a light.
and i havent even begun to think about this.. just about any app-maker that has something which can play streams is likely including analytics tracking what is being listened to and willing to sell data to Nielsen or whoever else
one time those freaks actualy called me up - "yes, i listen to 25 different pirate stations, 10 of them on MWAM, and 3 college stations. im sure you can figure out which ones"
Flawed as the PPM methodology may be, I would nevertheless agree with Arbitron that, overall, the PPM provides more useful data than the diary method does. Not that diaries are useless, of course. In fact, diaries are a pretty decent measure of how effective a station's branding is. But if I had to a pick a methodology, I'd rather gamble that a consumer is exposed but not listening...and gain tremendous granularity down to the minute...than rely on something inherently unreliable (human memory) and sacrifice any confidence about granularity beyond the 60 minute mark. (AQH my fanny) :
Neanderpaul said:
Except the "stations" in malls pumping out the Christmas music aren't local FMs, they're dedicated feeds from in-house music services. A PPM wouldn't recognize them as anything, I'd think.
Like it or not, there is a "silent majority" of casual listeners out there who like hearing a limited selection of seasonal songs every day from Thanksgiving (or earlier) through Christmas. They don't post on boards like this, but rest assured there are a whole lot more of "them" than there are of "us."
aaronread said:
Except for the fact that the # of meters in a market is so small (in mine, less than 1500 providing useable data for a population of 3.5 million & actually 5.5 million if you count the county Arbitron ignores because they're not paid to include them) that one meter out of the market, or one missed day of listening can skew the numbers at ridiculous levels.
On any given day, your station's ratings are determined by less than 50 in-demo meter holders.
Read that again
Less than 50 people determine your ratings.
Can you imagine *any* other multi-billion dollar industry that would allow that currency to be considered valid?
Oh wait...Arbitron doesn't even stand by their measurement.
"PPM ratings are based on audience estimates and are the opinion of Arbitron and should not be relied on for precise accuracy or precise representativeness of a demographic or radio market." - Arbitron
Except Madison Avenue accepts the Arbs as gospel, which means radio companies have no choice but to toe the line.Neanderpaul said:
I remember getting the basics of polling explained to me and other students in a journalism class back in college. The prof basically told us that a couple of hundred people was a statistically accurate sampling in a city of several hundred thousand providing your pool of interview subjects was truly random.
I don't know for sure whether this was true or not, but I was told that about ten or fifteen years ago, Clear Channel Entertainment (since spun off under the name "Live Nation") installed a device that detected what station car stereos were tuned to when entering what was then the Tweeter Center (now the Comcast Center, originally the Great Woods Amphitheater) in Mansfield, MA. This had nothing to do with ratings, but was a marketing tool to find out what stations their concert audience clientele were listening to.
Just in case this actually existed, I always tuned to a college station such as WMBR when entering the Amphitheater.
Just in case this actually existed, I always tuned to a college station such as WMBR when entering the Amphitheater.
CTListener said:
But it's *not* random. Demographic quotas & gender/racial weighting continues to taint reality. Imagine a market made up of 30% of a certain ethnicity. But, that ethnicity makes up 80% of all 18-49 listening in the market. Or, perhaps 3 female meter holders are out of the market on vacation, and your P25-54 cume drops by 80,000 because you lost 92% of your female listening.
This isn't hyperbole. This happens. And yes...because Madison Ave. considers Arbitron's best guess, based upon a ridiculous system of passive exposure, to be law...
People lose jobs and stations flip format.
With Sludge leaving, any chance JR, Mary, Watson will return?
Eli Polonsky said:
It's true. CC did it at Connecticut locations too -- The Meadows in Hartford and Oakdale in Wallingford.
BoredModerator said:
Not likely in that configuration. I'm not interested in moving backward. JR is in FL. Watson & Mary have presented a package. We'll see.
Thanks for asking.
Neanderpaul said:
Arbitron's small sample sizes certainly seem to present a problem, but Arbitron has very complex analyses by which it defends the sample sizes. It seems to me that, with today's miniaturization technology and all of the advances in smart phones in the past three years or so, it would be possible to replace the dedicated PPM unit, which listeners wear, with a standard smart phone running specially developed PPM app software. This approach would allow--even encourage--significantly larger sample sizes. From all I've heard, however, Arbitron has very actively resisted any such suggestion. They have invested a lot of $$$ in the dedicated PPM, and it appears that any move away from proprietary hardware would destroy the value of their investment. Is the "moat" they have constructed with their proprietary technology deep enough and wide enough to fend off a well funded competitor that would use a standard shrink-wrapped smart phone plus proprietary software?
My whole family has meters, since 2009. It's a great way to give a big 'FU' to stations I hate...like 'All Advertisements' WBZ, and pretty much all local AM & FM radio and ALL local 'TeeVee Nooz.' Instead, I listen to Podcasts during my commute, which is what the PPMs pick up. I also time-shift my TV shows so I can blast through the commercials. Advertisers probably hate me for what I do, but my obligation sure isn't to make them happy.
.....My whole family has meters, since 2009. It's a great way to give a big 'FU' to stations I hate...like 'All Advertisements' WBZ, and pretty much all local AM & FM radio and ALL local 'TeeVee Nooz.' Instead, I listen to Podcasts during my commute, which is what the PPMs pick up. I also time-shift my TV shows so I can blast through the commercials. Advertisers probably hate me for what I do, but my obligation sure isn't to make them happy.......
Nothing in this post makes any sense; just the usual babble where you take every programming decision as a personal affront. Watching someone use a radio geek board to show what a
"badass" he is boarders on the surreal.
Regards,
TSB
Nothing in this post makes any sense; just the usual babble where you take every programming decision as a personal affront. Watching someone use a radio geek board to show what a
"badass" he is boarders on the surreal.
Regards,
TSB
DanStrassberg said:
Since the switch to PPM, ratings seem much more consistent from survey to survey than they used to be under the diary system. My clients are mostly stations with small audience shares, and those used to fluctuate wildly from book to book. Nowadays they don't. That suggests the numbers are reasonably accurate.
[Aside: I don't know how many times I've had to wince listening to a GM or PD proclaim "our numbers are up 30% this book", when the numbers in question were almost all noise. Or did they really think their audience went from 70% women 18-34 one book to mostly older men in the next?]
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