PPM: Concept Versus Implementation

In every human endeavor two things have to be right before success occurs.

The concept has to be good. A lot of people think that PPM electronic measurement is a good concept. The owners of radio groups have signed off on the concept.

I'll come back to the quality of concept issue. I don't think it is as clear as some believe.

But implementation clearly isn't working out.

1. Sample size. It stinks. Maybe that is because broadcasters are too cheap to pay the needed costs. But when you look at the way they've managed their stations over the past few years it seems very difficult to believe that they would compromise quality just to cut costs. Right.

2. Compliance. Didn't they test this? Did nobody know that people would leave these things in their cradles? Did nobody know that women would lock them up in their office desks when they went out to lunch? Arbitron tells participants to wear the meter "rise to retire". But they don't get it. And so far, we are evidently such sheep that we will say "ok!" to the notion that everything is working when a survey participant only carries the PPM around for 8 hours. That's all Arbitron asks for. What happened to "rise to retire"?

Now, about that concept quality Kool-Aid.

1. To make this thing worth the cost, it was necessary to paint the diary as a dismal failure. But this has been tested thoroughly. About 15% of listening is lost with a diary, and most of that is incidental and very short term listening. Yet the quotes about the "broken and outdated diary" keep coming. Tell a lie often enough...

15% versus 50% when the PPM sits in the cradle or locked up in a desk or buried in a purse.

2. One of the benefits was to be granularity. You could see people tuning out of individual songs. Forget that. The sample size don't begin to support that. I don't see that as ever changing, do you? It is a nice idea, but we in the radio industry simply don't want to pay for it.

3. Arbitron likes to show how the PPM can measure the audience for a single football game. I was creating that same analysis for WGN, Chicago as long as 15 years ago, using diaries. Yes, the numbers are bigger for the PPM survey than for the diary survey. But how many of those numbers are from very short listens? Perhaps the sample size is larger. Their charts don't show that. But that's only statistics anyway. More important is the actual measurement. What is the TSL distribution curve? A manager I spoke with was told by an Arbitron executive that they are trying to make it possible in the future answer that. But not yet. Why not? isn't this thing ready for prime time?

4. Pursuing that same line, PPM cume levels are silly. They show listening to an average of 6 stations per week. Why? Because the PPM system does not measure listening.

That bears repeating. The PPM system does not measure listening.

PPM measures exposure. Not listening. Apples and oranges.

And turnips. As in turnip truck. As in did we just fall off one?

Why do we care?

Because advertisers want to buy attention. Not a computer chip that picks up an embedded signal that happens to be in the same room.

Because Arbitron cripples our ability to apply the survey to radio programming analysis.

This is a huge problem that could cripple our business.

To work on our programming, we need to understand purposeful behavior. We need to study listening that was done on purpose, not incidental behavior that may have very little correlation to our programming efforts.

Consider the insanity of using today's PPM data to draw the conclusion that 2 stopsets an hour is the right way to group spots.

Insane. See my most recent blog.

New oldies stations (after they were dismantled in droves to create Jack). Fewer smooth jazz stations. All because of the hunt for PPM success.

It was bad enough to realize through the diary system that 20% of our cume gives us 65% of our listening. How much harder will it be to find and understand the behavior of our true audience when it is masked by a sample that listens to vastly more stations for incredibly shorter times because of methodology that measures exposure rather than listening by intent?

I have personally tried to gain access to PPM data to start to look for answers. I have tried to reach out to Arbitron and help them. Their lack of responsiveness has been very disappointing. Maybe they don't want too many questions asked. I don't know. But they should welcome with open arms anybody who will invest the time to study how to improve the PPM system.

Because right now, it sucks.