The Real Story on Radio “Metrics”
One of the most common complaints with podcasting is that there are no established metrics like in radio. People expect exact number of listeners, downloads and impressions for digital media. I am all for it, and we are working diligently on it at GigaVox but I constantly find it amazing that advertisers are completely satisfied with hand filled rating diaries for radio.
Mark Ramsey posted a perfect example today on Hear 2.0. (Mark is a well known radio consultant.)
In fact, if that one diary of listening were added to the station’s audience pile, it would have been worth an estimated .2 share among persons 25-54…. The station would have leaped five rank positions…. I don’t need to spell out the revenue consequences.
Make sure you read the whole post on his blog. This is amazing to me: One listener, one diary, five rank positions! These are the numbers they rely on to drive a $20 billion dollar ad market for radio. (And yes all you math wizards, I understand sampling sizes and all the fancy math behind this.) All that said: One listener, one diary, five rank positions.
Knowing this, I am confident that podcasts (and new media in general) can already give advertisers and sponsors more accurate and detailed data - now it’s just a matter of educating the marketplace. Two years from now, the pendulum will swing the other way and advertisers will then be hammering magazines and radio about why they can’t provide the same metrics as podcasts.
I am looking forward to NAB this year, lots of questions buzzing around in my head.
MWG this is a good post. I have been telling podcasters for two years to stop letting the ad agencies push them around on this. The agencies accept the Arbitron numbers as Gospel. In smaller markets, as few as 50 diaries are mailed out. That doesn’t mean 50 are turned in. And careers and companies are on the line.
When someone asks me how I know a listener who actually downloaded my podcast really listsned, I respond by asking them if they hold radio to the same standard. How do they know someone listened to the ad they ran on their local radio station? They don’t. But it doesn’t stop them from buying the ad.
We need to stop letting advertisers hold us to a higher standard than they do other media. Period.
I’ve heard lots of back and forth over which stats we get are real. It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting a STANDARD like the Arbitron ratings, that the advertisers will buy into. We need less talk about whether hits, downloads, subscriptions or RSS feeds are accurate, and more talk about creating a unified, industry standard that we can provide the advertisers access to through a third party.
Thanks for bringing this up.
Scott,
Thanks for the comment. The more I speak with people the more clear it becomes that what they want is not necessarily the “right” number as much as numbers and a standard (as you put it) that everyone can agree to. Then they can just apply their own discount metrics. Makes sense. As I said, no one loses their job for trusting Arbitron…