Meet the new radio ratings system. Same as the old one. Or is it?
Welcome to Unmade, mostly written on a beautiful Monday at Sisters Beach, Tasmania. We had a couple of whales hanging out in the bay for much of the day. It was my first time seeing them here. Although a little distracting, it was as good a start to the week as they come.
And happy National Quiet Day. As an introvert, I endorse this occasion.
Today’s writing soundtrack: Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP.
There are now 1,088 of us on the Unmade train. That’s a growth of 74 per cent in the three weeks since I posted the first edition. Thank you, and please do keep reminding colleagues that they’re welcome to join us.
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Nothing quite says “we only value our readers in a monetary way” as a news site that places Outbrain or Taboola content at the bottom of every story. Any value your own headlines and story links provide is immediately dragged down by their “Secrets of Prince Charles’ Butler’s Laundry Success” nonsense.
Tim ,I never saw Ian Muir (great man)book ,but as the only CEO who was on board and the technical committees I would love to see if memories match .As John Grono knows ,it was groundbreaking to have the agencies and clients involved ,whilst introducing the most advanced audience system globally in OOH at the time.Today Move on audience volume distribution is still world leading ,and in partnering both the existing team with IPSOS will mean the best in global learning on digital will be combined with best practice audience volume and distribution .Smart move by the OMA
Hi again Tim.
Just some thought-starters regarding radio measurement.
FIrst, there is a subtle but an important difference between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’. ‘Hearing’ is a limbic function. ‘Listening’ is a cognitive function.
Take for example when you wend your way through a large shopping mall with all sorts of sounds, music, announcements, Spotify and radio playing. Were you really listening to that 10 seconds of un-recognised music or did you just hear it.
So this is where recall comes into play, which is very important with diaries.
The respondent makes the decision around the distinction between whether they heard a radio station or whether they listened to the radio station. From an advertiser (and hence agency) perspective they want data that most closely correlates to people listening to their ads rather than having just heard their ads.
Of course you can’t fill in a diary every minute, hence the 15 minute blocks in which you decide whether you listened to that channel for at least 8 of the 15 minutes. It’s probably a fair proxy for that person.
Conversely you can get respondents who simply tick the box for every quarter hour of their favourite Announcer/DJ’s shift. Some may even do that for every day. So yes, diaries can over-state listening and can (for some) be more like a popularity poll.
Flipping the coin yet again, most people wouldn’t carry a diary around with them (umm .. maybe everyone). So at the end of the day, the following morning, or maybe even the end of the week, they fill in the diary. That is really more a test of memory than actual listening and it tends to miss valid listening occasions.
Enter the e-diary on your mobile ‘phone. It’s a much more immediate and convenient method of data capture and hence likely to be more accurate. Well it is amongst those who are more comfortable with ‘phone apps. But consider how many more elderly people would cope with that method, and would rather a paper diary.
Therefore the ‘hybrid’ method that the radio industry has been using was a good meld which can be kept representative by varying the proportion of ‘phone v. diary as usage patterns change.
Now bring on electronic capture! While there are various ways in which they function they capture sound very accurately. Some systems are more accurate than others (e.g. using a reference system or an embedded code). The AU system is definitely accurate.
But their is one potential issue with electronic capture.
No, it’s not the device, the credit rules (e.g. volume), the software etc.
The problems start to happen when we give the devices to people. We tend to forget to wear or carry them from time-to-time. We also forget to charge them.
I had the opportunity to trial one of the devices some time ago. I carried the device and kept a very detailed log for a week down to the minute. Or so I thought.
Yep, the device captured genuine listening that I had missed – mainly radio listening in the car. It also captured listening that I had no cognition of – mainly short snippets of by-passing sound. And, yes, when I went to a pub in Leichhardt to see a band I forgot to take the bloody device.
So if you rely 100% on passive data capture any valid listening when not carrying the device, that data is lost. Forever. With a diary the respondent tends to ‘back-fill’ based on their memory, or ‘usual listening behaviour’.
So I would urge that any respondents who are 100% passive device based have access to a way to ‘top-up’ their listening manually online.
Cheers.
So