PPM Goes Live in Philadelphia

Arbitron Announces PPM Ratings Report Schedule for Philadelphia

All Ratings for Philadelphia Produced with Paper-and-Pencil Diaries—Including Arbitrends—End With Release of Fall 2006 Survey on January 11;

Electronic Measurement of Philadelphia Radio Market Begins on January 11

NEW YORK, January 9, 2007 – Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) will release on Thursday, January 11, the very last radio ratings for Philadelphia that it plans to produce by paper-and-pencil diaries: the Fall 2006 Philadelphia Local Market Report. The company also announced the delivery schedule for the new electronic Portable People MeterTM (PPMTM) ratings service that will begin for the radio market on January 11.

The Fall 2006 diary-based ratings report is being designated the “currency” in the market until the release of the March 2007 PPM ratings report. The January 2007 and February 2007 PPM radio ratings reports are to be released as demonstration data.

ONE-ELEVEN: PPM Goes Live In Philadelphia!

Still no reports on an agreement to encode the Clear Channel/ Philadelphia properties.

Radio Ink: It’s Philadelphia Freedom – From Paper & Pencil Diaries – As PPM Goes Live Today

Arbitron today (1/11) will release the very last radio ratings for Philadelphia that it plans to produce by paper-and-pencil diaries: the Fall 2006 Philadelphia Local Market Report. Starting today (1/11), Arbitron will begin Portable People Meter measurement in Philadelphia.

Philly PPM Specifics:

Based on a target install of 2,040 persons age 6 and older, Arbitron says they are currently more than 90 percent installed.

Cell phone-only households are ...  [MORE at Radio Ink]

WQXR-FM Signs For Arbitron Portable People Meter Ratings Service In New York

NEW YORK, January 8, 2007 – Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) announced today that WQXR-FM, the New York classical music radio station owned by The New York Times Company, has entered into a multi-year agreement for Arbitron’s radio ratings services that include Portable People Meter^TM audience measurement services when deployed in New York.  [Full Text of Press Release]

Media Planning Mindset

While the radio industry is having a discussion about whether or not it can or will embrace a passive measurement system like PPM, brand managers, marketers and agencies are having conversations that sound much like this article from Mark Green posted this week on MediaPost.  The radio industry should be digging into understanding this new system and how to use it to illustrate the accountability of this medium in the highly targeted, results-oriented, accountable world that is marketing today.

Targeting: From Seeing to Believing

Almost 40 years ago, the media community started negotiating television deals on gross ratings points for persons instead of households. Ten years ago, some intrepid buyers started to include the importance of unduplicated rating points, commonly called reach, in their negotiations. More recently, a few buyers began to target consumer ratings instead of demographic ratings.

The tools for this next step are still evolving through fusion and related technologies that connect consumption studies with media measurement tracking data. On the side, a whole business of marketing mix modeling has grown up to provide direction on which marketing techniques are driving short-term incremental sales. VNU/Arbitron's much discussed single-source Apollo pilot might become the centralizing force. It is meant to provide marketing, media, and purchasing observations in a single source, driving strategy and tactics for targeting and execution in real time without the fog and complexity of probability models.  [ MORE ]

After reading the full article, how many of our current sellers could we send in to have a conversation at this level - and with which tools would we prepare them?  MSO

Radio One Agrees to Encode its Radio Stations for the Arbitron Portable People Meter Ratings System in Philadelphia and Los Angeles

NEW YORK, January 5, 2007– Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) announced today that Radio One (NASDAQ: ROIAK and ROIA), the largest radio broadcasting company that primarily targets African-American and urban listeners, has agreed to encode its radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles for the Arbitron Portable People Meter^TM audience measurement services.

An encoding agreement is separate and distinct from any agreement to subscribe to the Portable People Meter ratings services.

[Full Text of the Press Release ]

WOR's VP/ Corp Director of Engineering on the installation of the PPM encoder

Radio World:  Arbitron PPM Coming to NYC

NEW YORK The Arbitron Portable People Meter is coming to New York, with encoder installations to start this month. Arbitron representatives recently spoke with New York market engineers at a meeting of the Society of Broadcast Engineers, Chapter 15, to discuss installation and technical issues, plus general questions regarding the PPM.

In preparation for the meeting, Arbitron shipped an encoding package to my office at WOR Radio, and I installed the PPM encoder on one of WOR’s backup STL paths. WOR was running active PPM encoding for the week and during the SBE meeting.

... WOR installed the analog PPM encoder on a backup path. Installation was literally a five-minute job.  [ MORE ]

Arbitron Agency Advisory Council Resolution

Arbitron Advertiser/Agency Advisory Council Issues Resolution about Encoding and the Portable People Meter

NEW YORK, January 3, 2007 – The Arbitron Advertiser/Agency Advisory Council, today announced a resolution regarding the introduction of the Portable People MeterTM and the participation of radio stations in the encoding process.

In 2007, Arbitron will introduce the Portable People Meter (PPMTM) system as the ratings currency for radio in Philadelphia, New York, and Houston, followed by more markets in the ensuing years. Arbitron’s PPM will be providing the ratings information used to make decisions in the buying and selling process of radio airtime and promotions.

The electronic nature of the PPM provides better measurement of radio audiences than is possible with today's pen and paper diary methodology. This electronic dimension generates a greater level of accountability – something that is absolutely critical to radio’s future.

R&R: Ad Agencies Call For All Stations To Encode

Arbitron is expected to release later today (Jan. 3) a resolution from its Advertiser Agency Advisory Council that strongly urges all radio stations to encode for the portable people meter service, according to a source on the Council. The resolution comes at a critical time for the PPM. Two radio groups, Clear Channel and Radio One, have yet to encode for the service in Philadelphia, which is set to go live with a two month demonstration period on Jan. 11. 

Because unencoded stations won’t be included in the ratings in Philadelphia, a difficult situation has been created for buyers. CARAT said it won’t buy unencoded PPM stations and ultimately, advertisers might have to avoid the market altogether if they cannot achieve enough weight in the buy.   [ MORE ]

MediaWeek: Arbitron Signs With Nassau for PPM in Boston

Arbitron announced Wednesday it signed a multi-year agreement with Nassau Broadcasting Partners for Arbitron’s portable people meter service in Boston, scheduled to become a PPM market in March 2009. Nassau recently purchased WCRB-FM, the market’s heritage Classical Radio Station. [ MORE ]