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on Arbitron's PPM It's become a hot political issue in Washington Oct 8, 2009 It seems like every few weeks the Portable People Meter is making headlines for one controversy or another. Last month a congressional report rapped Arbitron for failing to receive Media Rating Council approval for its radio measuring device, which is slowly replacing the paper diary system in markets across the country, as well as for allegedly undercounting minority listeners. That came after the Florida attorney general became the latest AG to sue Arbitron to block the device's rollout. In the time since, Inner City Broadcasting and Univision criticized the device in an editorial on TheHill.com. Still, media people in the more than a dozen markets where the PPM is in place maintain that many of the charges lobbed against Arbitron are political. They say the new device is much more accurate than the old diary system, and they pay little heed to the controversies. Bernie Shimkus, vice president and director of research at Harmelin Media, talks to Media Life about how the PPM has changed buying, why the controversies are bogus, and why the numbers are more reliable. What has been the biggest adjustment/change you've experienced from the paper diaries to the PPM? The biggest adjustment or challenge that Harmelin has experienced in the conversion from paper diaries to the PPM has been to effectively communicate to our clients that what we are seeing is simply a change in measurement, and not a change in actual radio listenership. Yes, the numbers are different. However, the PPM numbers are a different and better metric, and they more accurately reflect what radio listenership has always been in these markets. Do you feel the PPM data is more reliable than what you worked with before? Absolutely. The PPM data is more reliable for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the passive, electronic measurement methodology of the device itself that captures actual radio exposure and eliminates human errors or bias when reporting radio listening. Second, the use of an ongoing panel sample makes it much easier to match market population profiles compared with samples from 13 individual, weekly samples under the old diary methodology. The electronic measurement and ongoing panels of the PPM also provide us with more granular data to gauge how listening changes over time, or when a station airs special events or promotions. What stations have been most affected, in terms of your experience -- what's up or down, how have the stations been reordered in terms of ratings? This question is identical to the one you asked me last October and the answer really hasn't changed as more markets have converted to the PPM methodology. The stations that have been affected most are those that had the longest time spent listening figures and highly concentrated audiences under diary measurement. Various stations with urban or Spanish formats certainly fit that profile and show declines in reported AQH (average quarter hour) estimates. Although it is important to note that any station with high TSLs (time spent listening), regardless of format, experienced significant declines as well. However, as stated before, Harmelin feels that comparisons of PPM ratings to diary ratings are not worthwhile or completely valid. PPM radio ratings and diary ratings are really two different metrics in much the same way that C3 commercial TV ratings are a different and better metric than TV program ratings. How has the PPM changed how you're buying radio? How has the additional information affected the buying process? The impact of the PPM on buying has been limited since Harmelin maintained the effectiveness of radio schedules for our clients by focusing on spots rather than rating points. Over time, our planners have had to recalibrate effective weekly point levels to reflect the new reality of the PPM-measured radio world. And the volume of information has certainly added to the complexity of the buying process, especially with the compression in ratings and station rankings. Buyers are being challenged more than ever to understand and evaluate the subtle differences between stations with only a 0.1 rating difference. Audience duplication and other qualitative factors are playing a much greater role in the station selection process. Are media people still concerned about charges that the PPM undercounts minorities? How much credence do you give these claims? Media people would be more concerned about those charges if they were based on hard, statistical facts rather than ulterior business motives. Agencies and advertisers want accurate numbers that represent all groups as much as stations do. Unfortunately, most of the claims about the undercounting of minorities just aren't true. For example, the cume audiences for most ethnic formatted stations have increased significantly under the PPM methodology. Since by definition cume audience represents the number of different people a station reaches in a week, I don't know how higher cumes for minority stations translates into "undercounting." There have been groups and politicians trying to stop the rollout of the PPM. Do you think any of them will succeed eventually? Or do you expect the issue to eventually die down? For the sake of our clients, and the radio industry itself, we certainly hope not. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and even more political posturing based on that misinformation. This is not an area that politicians should be inserting themselves. And the radio industry would be better served to stop the bickering with Arbitron, and instead concentrate on using the wealth of new data the PPM provides to make a stronger case for why radio advertising is still an effective media channel for advertisers.
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