Mark Ramsey Media LLC - sync radio and digital media

How could confidence in audience measurement get any worse? It really can’t. Radio has nothing to lose here. Advertisers don’t believe the numbers they get, regardless of the methodology. They’ve seen what they get from online companies, and radio simply cannot deliver what they get from online. I have one advertiser telling me he can connect the dots directly between his online ads and so many units sold. How many radio stations can make that claim? Not many.
Of course the point could be argued: Is it the medium or the message? Are radio ads so poorly written, so poorly crafted, that they’re almost predestined to fail. No matter, advertisers have already formed their opinions, and this battle over PMM is completely off their radar.
This is a good time to trash Arbitron for the arrogant way they forced a huge price increase on radio, using their monopoly, and decreasing the quality of the service. If Clear Channel tried to do what Arbitron is doing, you bet people would be screaming to bring the Feds in.

Still, radio does work for advertisers, George. The medium isn’t perfect, of course.
Arbitron is moving in the PPM direction because the advertisers and agencies and stations are demanding it, for the most part. And – for better or worse – it costs more to go digital.
So I don’t know how to blame them for doing anything other than answering a need.
In the long run, the more accountable radio becomes, the less we need ratings anyway.

You just hit the nail-on-the head in you last comment Mark. When individual station or cluster campaigns become “measurable”, the ability to tract lead generation or some performance guarantee, there will be no need for ratings performance.
In the meantime, here is one more “government in our lives (and business)” we don’t need. How will any outcome help radio their key challenges as a business model?

I was all prepared to go sarcastic and talk about how we should appreciate AG Cuomo’s quick entry into the fray, on behalf of the poor, mistreated radio listeners. And that we should welcome any research methodology tips the attorney general’s office can offer Arbitron, who is obviously and purposefully putting out audience estimates that don’t reflect true radio listening.
But then I saw George’s post. Most advertisers recognize the inherent limitations in any research. But they also know that the more accurate it can be, the better for them. I’m an advertiser now. If I really thought the FCC or the New York attorney general would make the research better some way, I’d lead the parade.
They won’t. They can’t. All they can do is cost Arbitron money (which gets passed along to the customer), take time and resources away from Artibron, the FCC and the AG’s office doing what they really should be doing, and, finally, do exactly what Mark has mentioned: “It’s a development that will serve to diminish confidence in all radio measurement and in all the stations that use it, regardless of whether that measurement is derived from paper or meters.”
George, you are correct about Internet accountability. All media will eventually have to move toward pricing based more on results than audience estimates. But for many–likely most–advertisers, there will always be the need for listening/viewing/readership estimates to determine where potential customers can best be reached. Accurate, unbiased, well-done, and believable estimates.
(Are you listening, Cumulus?)
Don Keith
http://www.donkeith.com

I know, all the trash-talking about PPM makes my head hurt too. But as a decided non-apologist for Arb’s methods and practices, a couple of points:
1) for the next 5,6, 10 years, until we are living in a robust wifi world, radio will be a viable and largely unacountable medium (at least in the true sense of cause and effect) that serves a niche between home and other locations. It will need ratings.
2) Enron had a logical business proposition and huge potential market – to deliver the lowest-cost, most demand-sensitive power on the grid. Did that stop them from doing things to harm their customers, consumers, and communities?
3) To assume that Arbitron has an incentive to act in the best interest of the industry, at the expense of high margin (if they thought they could get away with it), is simply naive.
4) Arbitron has a public track record of cutting corners and not delivering on contractual promises (small-market initiative ring a bell?)
4) When executives knowingly violate the trust of their clients, and do not disclose the extent that their business practices knowingly do conform to contractual specs, then its time to bring in someone who has the objectivity and power to solve the dispute.
5) If Cuomo finds and stops an abusive/dangerous Arbitron practice, he will ride to Albany on the wings of the broadcast community.