James Cridland

Nielsen's change to the definition of a radio listener

Clocks at Radio Netherlands

In the US and Canada, Nielsen changed the methodology for radio listening from January in PPM markets; and we’re beginning to see the results.

Someone listening to a radio station for just three minutes is now counted as a listener (rather than the previous five), resulting in an apparent significant increase for radio listening - 15% across all US radio, but a 41% jump for “all news” formats and a 28% jump for all listening in Phoenix AZ, for example. (Canadian listening also increased: cume was up by 18%).

So, if someone listens for just three minutes, these changes now mean that they’re counted as a listener to the entire quarter-hour. Someone who switches away at the start of an eight-minute ad break will be counted as a listener to all the ads, in spite not actually having listened to them.

In the UK, RAJAR has a five-minute threshold for counting as a listener to the whole quarter-hour. In Australia it’s eight minutes.

What kind of effect might these new, higher, figures have? Awkwardly, they might actually drop radio budgets. In coverage in iHeart’s Inside Radio, Nielsen is quoted as saying “Don’t be lured into the false expectation that I can buy fewer spots and get the same results, because the ratings are showing me that I can get 15% higher impressions”. But, if all the ad buyers purchase is total impressions, that’s exactly what’ll happen.

Here’s hoping those who buy radio are doing it because of the good results radio advertising gets. That won’t change, no matter how the numbers are calculated.

RCS

  • The excellent Iain Dale recently released, on his Iain Dale All Talk podcast, an hour’s interview with Richard Park. (This should take you right there in your favourite app). I’ve never met Richard, other than him once jovially saying hello to me outside a radio event somewhere (no idea how he knew who I was). Quite the giant of UK commercial radio: odd how, as radio consolidates, we have less of those types of figures in the industry. (Or, perhaps we do, still?)

  • I was on the Game Changers podcast over the weekend, giving my rather whiny views about ARN, Australia’s worst radio company. Sorry for spoiling it.

  • This newsletter has a new name - Radioland. The idea for the name came from “Mister Brisbane”, aka Brett Debritz, who I shall repay in beer in our six-monthly get-togethers; I’ve been a little worried that this slightly ragtag, inconsistent and sometimes sweary newsletter was being confused with the professional product I produce daily about podcasting, and this week saw two examples of this newsletter being called the wrong name (one edited out before you heard it; one edited out from a blog post after I asked nicely). So, we’ll give it a clear brand. That should help.

  • Also newly updated, apart from the new Radioland brand, is my biography.

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