Audience: Gross and Net

Michael Hedges June 22, 2009 Follow on Twitter

With the great 21st century platform shift there’s more audience out there broadcasters have discovered. Tracking them down is something of a challenge. It may take non-linear thinking.

French audience research institute Médiamétrie released some tantalizing figures about internet radio and podcast listening (June 17). Since the beginning of the year 34 million programs have been downloaded in France, 7 million just in May. Researchers estimate more than 13 million have listened to radio on the internet, 11.5 million live-streaming and 5.8 million downloading podcasts. While traditional radio listening has been greatest during morning (0700-0900) and evening hours (1800-2000), listening via the internet is fastest growing during the day (0930-1700).

This fall Médiamétrie, through a new service - eStat, will measure the internet radio users for a new study called ‘Catch-up Radio’. Most major French broadcasters have sign-on to the project. All want to capture the illusive Web user segment.  First results will be released in October. Unfortunately, Médiamétrie was a bit illusive about the methods.

“’Catch-up Radio’ responds to the market need for a baseline measurement of the different ways of listening to internet radio,” said Médiamétrie’s Franck Si-Hassen,

Preeminent UK media analyst Grant Goddard, dissecting recent RAJAR figures, noted a marked drop-off in time spent listening. In five years the listener hours per week to UK commercial radio dropped from 15.6 hours to 13.5. He directs your attention to the definition of radio listening used by the measurement service, RAJAR, as traditional linear consumption, which excludes “time-shifted consumption (listen again, podcasts) and non-broadcasters (Last.fm, Spotify).”

“Sooner or later,” he wrote in a report on UK radio (See here), “the industry will have to decide whether RAJAR is to remain merely a marketing tool to demonstrate the two traditional broadcasters’ (BBC and commercial radio) continuing dominance of the shrinking market for linear radio; or whether it is more important for RAJAR to demonstrate that ‘audio’ is a growing consumer medium now shared amongst a widening group of content providers.”

There’s little doubt that more ‘audio’ content is being delivered through the Web and mobile phones as these platforms become attractive to ‘non-linear’ consumers. Arriving at sums and shares for ‘audio’ rather than simply ‘radio’ listening is more than a simple challenge for the measurement services. All research problems can be solved with time and, mostly, money.

Measuring media consumption with interviews and diaries has a robust history. In the earlier part of this decade those methods were challenged, prodded by advertising people, by passive, electronic measurement. The inventors’ best efforts measured not consumer choice – active listening – but exposure to audio content by, either, collecting minute audio samples to match with a great data-base of all possible choices or collecting data from in-coded signals.

In theory any ‘audio’ content could be tracked and, thereafter, reported. Practice hasn’t made for perfect. Compliance, not an insignificant part of the measurement path, raised suspicions. People might take part in an interview about radio listening but reliably carrying or wearing a gizmo seems, for some survey participants, a step too far.

Most every media measurement institute has studied electronic measurement as a potential solution for consumers’ memory gap as the shelf-space of available audio content extends into the stratosphere. RAJAR in the UK and AG.MA in Germany rejected the switch to passive measurement, partly on method, partly on results and partly for financial reasons. Electronic measurement systems are being used in Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia, more often than not to augment diary-based measurement. In the United States, Arbitron – ratings supplier and developer of the proprietary electronic measurement system PPM (Personal People Meter) - is facing an inquiry by broadcasting and telecom regulator Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over complaints from broadcasters about flaws in methodology that might undercount certain listener groups.

The traditional linear radio audience measurement methods still cause broadcasters’ and advertisers’ heartburn. Audiradio, the Italian measurement service, tweaked its methodology at the first of the year, moving its telephone survey from day-after recall to “spontaneous” response. Media analyst Claudio Astorri discovered (read here – in Italian) in the most recent Q2 2009 survey the audience estimated for the top rated RAI RadioUno pales in comparison to “not specific.” Comparing the new survey totals with previous surveys Astorri found that 7.5 million Italians couldn’t name the stations they were listening to. And the size of that group has tripled.

Survey methods – media and otherwise – have been subjected to rigorous study yielding great understanding and insight. Most of this knowledge comes from the linear age of media consumption. Fortunately, as more is learned more questions are asked.

See also...

Media Measurement - Changing Times

The times are changing and so is media measurement. Big research companies are changing and growing. And governments are putting in their hands. Includes: mobile and internet metrics, electronic measurement systems and device descriptions, PPM (US) debate. 73 pages PDF (January 2009)

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