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Company to work with local market on schedule for commercializing the PPM radio ratings service in Houston.
Television data accreditation process continues pending source of language universe estimates for TV.
NEW YORK, January 29, 2007 – Arbitron Inc. (NYSE:ARB) announced today that the Media Rating Council® (MRC) has accredited the Portable People MeterTM radio ratings data in Houston.
NEW YORK, January 24, 2007 – Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) today announced that CBS RADIO is the first broadcaster to be assigned a dedicated in-house Arbitron Portable People Meter (PPM) trainer to educate advertising executives on use of PPM data for their sales efforts. Arbitron’s Jon Miller has been promoted to the newly created position of CBS RADIO PPM Account Manager and, along with a five-person PPM Implementation team, will provide extensive hands-on PPM training to CBS RADIO advertising executives.
Miller, who will work under the supervision of Scott Herman, executive vice president, Eastern Region, CBS RADIO, will head the two-year training program, which begins this month. He and his team will focus on the top 10 CBS RADIO markets, and work with CBS RADIO’s media-buying and advertising agencies educating them on the use of PPM data to effectively reach their audiences.
Radio ratings in nation's largest radio market and the embedded metros of Nassau-Suffolk and Middlesex-Somerset-Union to go electronic beginning September 20, 2007
Media Rating Council audit process scheduled to begin in March
13 New York stations owned by Buckley Broadcasting, CBS Radio, Emmis, New York Times and Spanish Broadcasting have already signed for PPM ratings service
NEW YORK, January 23, 2007 – Arbitron (NYSE: ARB) announced today that it has begun installing its Portable People Meter system among New York City-area consumers for the all-electronic radio ratings service which is scheduled to replace the current paper and pencil diary method that the company has employed to collect radio audience estimates in these New York area markets since the late 1960s.
For the New York radio market, Arbitron is recruiting a panel of 3,720 consumers (age 6 and older) to carry the Portable People Meter, a cell-phone sized device that automatically detects inaudible station identification codes. The planned sample size for Nassau-Suffolk is 1,440 persons (age 6 and older) and for Middlesex-Somerset-Union is 925 persons.
Arbitron will debut electronic measurement of New York area radio audiences on Thursday September 20, beginning a two-month demonstration period that will allow stations and agencies to better understand the differences between the two methods in the New York area markets.
Electronic radio ratings will replace diary-based ratings as “currency” in all three markets with the release of the December 2007 survey month (covering the four-week period of November 15 to December 12, 2007.) The release is scheduled for December 31, 2007, pending the completion of an audit report by the Media Rating Council (MRC) and a review of the audit report findings with the MRC radio committee. The MRC audit in these markets is scheduled to begin in March. [ MORE ]
Arbitron Inc. began using electronic monitors last week to measure radio ratings and started what will become a national system in Philadelphia, where it was tested several years ago.
Arbitron and its partners believe that the "portable people meter" is far more accurate than the pencil-and-paper diaries used since 1965. They also said PPM would show that radio's overall audience has been underrated, which ultimately could boost the medium's share of ad revenue. [ MORE ]
It appears that Arbitron's new ArbitronPDCentral blog, hosted by Gary Marince, went "live" today. The site will be an information forum with handy links, regular editorials by Gary, the opportunity to loft questions at Gary (and other Arbitron experts) and it will probably include lots of stuff about PPM. The premiere post:
Debunking myths about the Arbitron PPM "Panel"
“What if Arbitron has a panel that doesn’t have my listeners, am I screwed for a year till the panel changes?” [ MORE ]
(Maybe we should just ask the dog collar question to get it out of the way - over and done with.)
Check it out at http://www.arbitronpdcentral.com/
Good luck to Gary on what looks like a solid effort.
Arbitron Makes Noise With New Electronic Radio Rating System
Starting Thursday, Arbitron Inc. (ARB) is using electronic monitors to measure radio ratings, the first time the industry is turning to technology to replace the pencil-on-paper ratings logs abandoned long ago in major TV markets.
Ratings, of course, are critical to set ad rates, and the roll out of electronic measurement - like the switch to electronic television ratings beginning in the 1980s - brings the promise of quicker and more accurate tallies of the radio listening audience. It also could prove profitable for Arbitron, shares of which are nearing eight-year highs.
For radio companies, the embrace of electronic ratings could make their medium a more attractive destination for advertisers, who have long worried that they don't have a reliable measure of which radio stations people listen to and for how long. Particularly in an era where Internet users can be counted with every mouse click, the pressure in on for radio and other media to provide hard evidence that advertising on its medium works. [ MORE ]
Radio-ranking firm Arbitron, and the analysts who cover it, are betting a new product launched Thursday will pay off. The portable people meter, or PPM, is a small, wearable device that detects what radio stations people listen to. Some are outfitted with global positioning systems to track where listeners go after hearing an ad.
...
But analysts say 2007 could be a tough year for Arbitron, partly due to the costs associated with the PPM rollout. “We expect lumpy near-term results,” said Mr. McKenzie. But by 2008, the company’s earnings growth should pick up again, “as radio stations, ad buyers and advertisers come to embrace the more reliable and detailed measurement system,” he said.
PPM Process Schematic Unveiled
I believe that we have finally found a schematic that does the job. The old saw about "a picture and the thousand words" certainly works in this case. And, while it is not clear that this visual was originally created to explain the PPM process, we have found that it does the job masterfully. After only a few minutes with this schematic, one can truly comprehend the scope and magnitude of this system.
Click HERE for the visual. Turn up your speakers. MSO
(This link will take you to a non-PPMNews and non-Arbitron site.)
Posted by Mark Shannon O'Neill on January 22, 2007 at 11:52 PM in PPM Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)