Wake up and smell the coffee, Steve

This could be one of those days when Arbitron CEO Steve Morris wakes up asking himself why he ever left that good job running the Maxwell House coffee business for General Foods. Yesterday (Wednesday November 14) four of his biggest clients – Clear Channel Radio, Cox Radio, Cumulus Media and Radio One – fired off a letter, provided to ftm, that began, 'It is with the utmost urgency and objection that we, your customers, send you this letter.'

Arbitron under Morris’ leadership has suffered, spent, suffered more and spend more (than any media research company) bring passive, electronic measurement to market. Earlier this month Time magazine listed the PPM device as one of 2007’s best inventions.  The company has been rolling out, market by market, electronic measurement, replacing the last century’s diary survey, for the last year.

Nothing about PPM’s development has been easy, cheap or without controversy. Ad buyers were sold on the idea from the beginning, largely because capturing exposure to media is more meaningful (to ad buyers) than brand strength. US broadcasters, beholden to ad buyers for life, held their noses, generally, and signed on.

Panel sample size has been an argument-starter between researchers and their clients since time immemorial. One of the godfathers of media research Elmo Roper famously explained sampling to the uninitiated saying, “It’s not necessary to drain the body completely for a valid blood test.”

But Arbitron’s biggest US clients, viewing the Houston, Philadelphia and New York City sampling, are just about one step beyond pissed off. And, accordingly, the objections raised about sample deficiencies are causing double-takes at the ad agencies. The letter to Arbitron is blunt:

“The most immediate issue is sample size – especially with regard to 18-34 year olds and ethnic groups. The situation is clear: To secure a legitimate representation of listener activity, the number of people participating in the PPM survey must be increased.

“Your recent proposal to lower the number of market-level respondents needed to issue a valid report for a specific demographic is both specious and dangerous. This proposal could result in some stations doing business based on the activity of as few as a single – one – listener. Your own researchers have concluded that such a sample size “has a greater range of error than the size of the estimate.”

“There are many ethical and sound business choices that can be made by Arbitron here. One is to eliminate the 6-11 portion of the sample and reallocate those meters to participants in other demographics based on a 12+ population.

“Under any circumstance, we expect guaranteed in-tab delivery in the 18-54 age group for all age cells and across all ethnic groups, including Hispanics and African Americans.

“Please be aware that this is a critical and immediate issue for your customers undersigned and we are expecting an action plan to correct these matters within 30 days.”

Nobody in the media world seriously questions the necessity for measurement to reflect the realities of indoor, outdoor, at-home, away-from-home, multi-media and multi-channel media usage. The old diary, rest in peace, worked reasonably well in a simpler world. Nobody wants to go backward.

What the media world wants is a robust measurement system that accurately reflects today’s realities. But any university student taking that elementary statistics course knows that a sample on one is just not real. Really. - Michael Hedges November 15, 2007

Keywords:audience measurement, Arbitron

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