New Measurement Devices Raise New Questions.
Will We Ever Know Who’s Listening?

Michael Hedges August 1, 2004

Ratings services in an ever-increasing number of countries are testing electronic measurement, potentially replacing the diaries listeners dutifully fill out or telephone calls that interrupt their dinner.
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“The pace towards adoption is quickening,” says Jay Guyther, ARBITRONs senior vice-president for international marketing of the Portable People Meter (PPM). Tests are planned or currently running in Norway, France and Portugal. Last year Flemish-Belgian public broadcasting sale-house Vlaamse Audiovisuele Regie (VAR) began using the PPM  for proprietary marketing and promotional analysis between radio and television stations, according to Guyther. ARBITRON licensed the PPM  technology to TNS Media, which has a five year contract with VAR and also supplies PPM  technology to Television Singapore for cross-media measurement.

ARBITRONs PPM  has stiff competition from another passive measurement device, the Swiss-developed Radiocontrol™. Since 2001 radio listening in Switzerland and neighboring Liechtenstein has been measured exclusively by a sample of people wearing the watch-like device, providing an interesting laboratory for examining differences between passive measurement and other methods. The Radiocontrol™ technology was jointly developed by a GfK subsidiary and Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SSR-SRG) and is now wholly owned by GfK Group. AC Nielsen Media International licensed the technology for the Asia-Pacific region.

GfK Praha, the GfK subsidiary in the Czech Republic, implemented a Radiocontrol™ panel in Prague for a 13-week test starting in April measuring both radio and television. 

Nowhere has passive measurement for radio been more contentious than in the UK. RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Ltd.), the organization that oversees radio measurement for both the BBC and commercial radio, tested both the Radiocontrol™ watch and ARBITRONs PPM  and decided against immediate implementation. One issue was the great differences between results from diary-based surveys and the two passive devices. The Wireless Group (TWG), owner of TalkSport, contracted separately with GfK Media for radio audience surveys using the Radiocontrol™ watch. RAJAR is set to begin a second round of testing later this year with the Radiocontrol™ watch, ARBITRONs PPM and devices from is looking at a number of devices from other un-named companies. 

Not all ratings services are jumping at the chance to change the methods. Both ARD Sales and Services (AS&S) and Radio Marketing Service (RMS), principle contractors for radio measurement in Germany will, in the words of RMS spokesperson Kirsten Schade, “stick with the MA (Media-Analyse) interview for the audience measurement because it has proven to be the most specific and reliable method.”

Currency

Ratings and audience market shares provide a currency, a common language, through which a broadcasters performance is measured. Audience measurement also provides currency, a medium of exchange, between broadcasters and advertisers. The methods changed, though slowly, through evolving needs of advertisers, broadcasters and the ratings services.

Radios arrival in the 1920s – then TV in the 1950s – jolted the advertising industry. Only when reliable audience measurement arrived did ad agencies see benefits to their revenues. The Audimeter, introduced by AC Nielson in the 1930s to measure radio listening, recorded where the radio dial was set. The same idea was used to measure television audiences two decades later.

RAJAR was established as a joint industry organization in 1992 to standardize radio audience measurement in the UK. Similar organizations were formed in Europe as demand for measurement coincided with commercial radios introduction; Mediametrie (France) in 1986, Audiradio (Italy) in 1988, RUAB (Sweden) in 1993. In Germany, Media-Analyse AG was formed, originally, by advertising interests in 1954. In other countries large market research firms, notably TNS Gallup, IPSOS and GfK, conduct radio audience surveys. Where industry associations are relatively recent, competing suppliers offer different surveys to individual clients.

Asking survey participants to recall the stations and channels they’ve tuned to remains the commonly accepted method. People are typically asked to detail their listening, by each 5 to 7 minute interval, in a diary supplied by the researchers. The diaries list every possible radio channel available with dial positions and, often, slogans.

In the UK the RAJAR survey uses diaries reflecting 750 unique survey areas and station combinations. A trained field-worker meets each survey participant, asking additional information and explaining the diary. After a week the field-worker returns to collect the diary in person.

After the diaries are collected and interviews completed, research companies crunch the data, issue reports and DJs receive either a bonus or the sack.

From time spent to time exposed

Collecting consumer data with diaries has been a mainstay of market research since the 1930s. Diaries are considered effective in surveys of how people spend their time.

But diaries are not without their flaws. One criticism is that the substantial time required to fill out the diaries leads people to make mistakes, even reporting listening that might not have occurred. A persons memory is selective and the most well-known radio brands seem to benefit.

Because surveys are widely used they are widely studied. Ball State University (US) shadowed a group of consumers and compared their reported media usage with direct observation. In a report published by the Center for Media Design in February, diaries were far more accurate compared with telephone interviews in reporting radio listening.

“We believe that diary audience measurement for radio has served the industry extremely well for many years,” wrote ZenithOptimedia Chief Executive Antony Young in an email to UK Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) Chief Executive Douglas McArthur in April and made available by the RAB. The diary method “has provided a stable and comprehensive measurement of radio audiences,” he wrote.

But the ad buying industry is clearly ready to move on. Young supports a single measurement system in the UK managed by a joint industry committee, RAJAR, and the introduction of electronic measurement for all broadcast media. ZenithOptimedia, a top global media buying agency, is owned by the French Publicis Groupe.

Single-point measurement – measuring the radio and other media choices as well as purchase behavior through a single panel or sample – has long been a goal of advertisers and ad buyers.

“New electronic meters appear to offer a potentially viable audience measurement methodology for radio, and also for television and cinema audiences,” wrote Young.

Radio has more in common with TV than with print, says Lucie Pokonra, manager of the Radiocontrol project for GfK Praha. “We have chosen (the Radiocontrol watch) intentionally to test the multimedia potential of the device in an attractive situation of events which are covered by both, radio and TV,” she said. The Prague test takes place during the media-intensive coverage of EU accession, football and hockey championships and elections for the European Parliament.

Both Arbitron and Radiocontrol are offering new versions of the meter devices that measure more than just radio. "My sense is the economics of this will make it hard to put out in the field if the only thing it's doing is measuring radio listening," says Northwestern University (US) ratings expert James Webster in an April Washington Post article on electronic measurement.

Research costs, always bourn by broadcasters, are another consideration. Some research suppliers are concerned about falling response rates, particularly among key age groups. Broadcasters often believe higher sample sizes will solve this problem. The audience research process is expensive and includes a scientific selection of individuals to participate as well as incentives to participate. UK radio broadcasters currently pay about 7% of their ad revenue for audience measurement. Estimates from RAJAR suggest this cost could double or triple for electronic measurement.

“What gets measured gets done,“ wrote the highly respected management consultant Tom Peters.

As the heat of the electronic measurement debate in the UK became intense last year, Jane O’Hara, former RAJAR managing director, warned broadcasters to take great care in considering what, exactly, they wanted measured. Writing in the August 2003 Cultural Trends, O’Hara pointed out one of many differences between methods: “The decision to be made is whether to 'edit out' listening below a certain threshold in a week: advertisers will need to decide whether there is value in a four-second listener: programmers will need to decide if they want to target four-minute listeners.”

In the same publication University of Sunderland’s Dr. Guy Starkey strongly suggested that electronic measurement would change the way broadcasters and ad agencies think about listening, listeners, programming and branding. Starkey wrote: “Instead of communicating memorable branding and trying to hold the listener's attention for as long as possible, the focus of most radio programmers may turn to getting their stations tuned into, in as many public places as possible, because listener choice will become less important than simple exposure to the metered minority.”

Broadcasters invest considerable resources establishing and strengthening their brands. Brand strengthening has become a management strategy common among businesses, organizations and even individuals. Having a strong brand is good while the weak brand is bad.

“Making branding memorable to listeners will, however, be less important than at present,” writes Starkey in a recent email correspondence. “A marketing budget may be better spent on giving incentives to shopping centers to play a station as a background, than on, for example, TV ads. Where measurement depends on recall, programmers have to rely on diary respondents remembering they were listening, so there is much repetition of brand identifiers like jingles and slogans. Electronic measurement removes this imperative and branding may become more relaxed in many cases.”

Companies, though the branding exercise is not limited to commercial enterprises, measure the strength of their brands. Top-of-mind awareness, consumer recall of brands, is the commonly accepted measure of brand strength. Public service broadcasters rely on audience measurement to demonstrate public acceptance and use of its channels. Funding is often based on those results. Starkey suggests that measuring simple exposure rather than brand strength may not be enough to justify certain PSB radio channels. “Electronic measurement may well cause a revival in the kind of Appreciation Index traditionally used by the BBC to measure how much audiences actually value a service,“ he writes.

The European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR), the professional market research industry organization, takes on the electronic measurement question at the three-day Worldwide Audience Measurement conference in June in Geneva, Switzerland. An entire day is devoted to radio. Chairman of The Wireless Group Kelvin MacKinzie proponent of electronic measurement in the UK is scheduled to address the group speaking about how the new measurement will change the radio landscape.

Previously published in Radio World International, July 2004

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UK audience figures are "sensitive" - August 1, 2004

Audience figures affect the share prices of UK commercial radio companies in the UK, says an article in the Media Guardian. Commercial broadcasters appealed to RAJAR to release data earlier in the day. Spokesperson for the BBC said they don't care one way or the other.