Mark Ramsey Media LLC - sync radio and digital media

Would the last remaining radio station employee please shut down the transmitter on the way out the door?

Radio sales people, Ad agencies and media buyers are impressed with their qualitative and numbers. Like in the next two years, women 18-24 (2400 listeners) plan to get married. Duh.. boy are we smart or what.
CLIENTS, and people who run businesses simply want their cash registers to ring! And they want to know their ad dollars are producing tangible results. Numbers in a book only takes you so far... this is where the rubber hits the road! Why can't we get this right?

Compare this absolutely absurd methodology to a Google analytic report (after placing a free script from Google into your business website). Add a tracking phone number to for about $15 to $30 a month. The result is a measurable matrix of key findings, trends and actions taken. The radio rep comes in to present to me and discusses how they reach 17% of the universe and 18% if their 13-34 male demo plans to attend an amusement park within the next 2 years based on an in-tab of 22 diaries in a market of 1 million people. Understand that this is just one of the many reasons there is migration of ad spend to the Internet and one more key business challenge for the radio industry as a whole. Yet the radio industry wants to believe in a large part, they are a victim of bad perception among ad agencies and local businesses.

And I always thought carrying around a PPM would be work - the sticker diary makes carrying a PPM look like a vacation

Wow. Most people I know would throw that right in the trash. Waaaaaay too much work for their interest level or attention span. Dunno about your market but here in ours, if you pull up at an intersection and take a listen to what the people in the car next to you are listening to, you'll likely be hard pressed to find it on your radio dial.
Lots of people listening to cd's, mp3 players, etc etc. You'd probably have better luck doing a 'man on the street' questions with a video cam and a microphone and ask people what their favorite station is and how old they are. Sure, it's not 'scientific' but you'd probably get a lot better handle on the real market conditions around you.