The Reality of Radio Ratings

As I was writing last weeks article about a common sense approach to radio advertising schedules, I mentioned radio and television rating services.  Namely Nielsen and Eastlan.

The original purpose of rating services where to assist the radio and tv program managers.  They wanted to know how many people tuned it and for how long.

When I worked on the air, and was a radio program director, we would do our best to program our station not just listeners, but also for the small handful of people who filled out the surveys provided by the rating services that was used to give us our ratings.

We tried to hack the system.  Often a radio station will give away their biggest prizes on Thursdays.  That’s because Thursdays are when a week begins for those diary keepers.

So while the ratings where supposed to help guide the programming people make decisions as to what to put on the air, they eventually became a tool of the sales department.  And then things got really nuts.

Formulas were developed that could determine how to reach the maximum number of people of a particular demographic with your advertising message.  Another formula was developed that shows the Cost Per Point and Gross Rating Points and a bunch of other stuff that might make sense to an advertising agency media buyer but it is missing a very important reality.

That reality is that all that data that ratings companies gather are time sensitive.  They are not a guarantee of who is going to hear your ad next week, or even today.  Nor yesterday, or last week.  They are a historical document.  Period.

I don’t care if you are in a city the size of New York that uses electronic devices that you wear that record what radio station is playing in your vicinity, (People Meters), or a dairy that you are asked to fill out manually to record what station you listened to every 15 minutes for a week.  Or even a phone call asking you what station you are listening to this very moment.  This is all the same data, just using different methods to gather, but it is history, not current.

I’m in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Our market is surveyed twice a year, in the spring and fall for 13 weeks by the two major radio rating services.  After the data is collected, it takes at least 4 weeks before it is released and then depending on who you are and how much money you are willing to pay, you get access to this data and can dig in to see who listened, when they listened, and how long they listened.  It’s not as in depth as the NSA data gathering, as we don’t know the names and addresses of our listeners, but we know how many there are and the software allows us to build a picture of who listens to each station, all based on those surveys twice a year.

The limitations of radio ratings is buried in the fine print and disclaimers, like the “terms of service” we never read.

But here’s the reality regarding those limitations.  Things change.  This year in Fort Wayne, nearly half of the radio stations either changed names, changed ownership, changed formats, disappeared or started up this year, in the past 8 months.  And the rating information we have to work with does not include data on all of those changes.

So is it all bogus?

No, but you have to understand what conclusions you can really make if someone talks about ratings.

Any radio station that changed around March 27th or after this year doesn’t have accurate data.  That was the start of the Spring Rating Survey.  That includes FM Stations at  96.3; 96.9; 102.9; 103.3; 103.9; 106.3 and AM Stations 1250 & 1450.

Because these stations (in their current format) have not been included in the Spring 2014 ratings survey due to one of  changes mentioned above, we simply don’t know anything based on the ratings about their audiences.  It will be the end of January 2015 before there is any rating info available.

Some of the stations that did not change are impacted by these stations that changed,  but we won’t know until January 2015.

Here’s what we do know and what I present when asked about who listens to WOWO radio and other stations:

WOWO has a steady history of having the largest audience in Fort Wayne and 95% of those that listen are adults 21 and older.  We have the data provided to us by the independent rating service to back that up.  I can also provide you with information on any other station in Fort Wayne that was on the air this past spring (2014).

As the disclaimers in the financial world state: Past performance is not an indication of future results.  In other words, no one can tell you how many listeners are listening to any radio station at this very moment.

Now if you want to know about the fallacies of Cost Per Point and Gross Rating Points as a standard measurement for deciding what to buy on the radio, hit me up sometime, but it has about as much impact on real life as Fantasy Football.

 

As always, you can reach me at Scott@WOWO.com or 260-255-4357.