Today I’m proud to announce something new: A new division of my company, Mark Ramsey Media. For many years we have served the research needs of all broadcasters everywhere. That will not change. Christian broadcasters, however, are a special subset with special needs and – in many cases – a business model driven by fans, not by ratings. Over time, my company has become the leading strategic research firm for Christian radio. So now we’re doubling down with a new division buil

Inside the Epic Battle for Media’s Future. And… How Amazon’s New Convenience Store Changes Everything. Plus, rants and raves on the newest blockchain star, Kodak (?), the “shocking” finding that women over 50 don’t believe your ads, and more. It’s episode 78 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Listen as we go inside media to reveal the ugly truth! Click the play button below: And if you’re reading this by email, click here

Gordon Borrell has issued his latest report benchmarking local media’s digital revenues, and it’s another eye-opener. Here’s my full conversation with Gordon about this report, the consequences for the radio industry, and what radio can learn from it. Part 1 publishes today, Part 2 tomorrow. What’s the biggest way this report is different from your previous reports? I think after 15 years, basically, of doing these reports, you really either see a pattern or you’re stupid. An

At NAB, Rob Walch, VP at Libsyn (and a very smart guy) attempted to debunk the “myth” that shorter-length podcasts are more popular than long-form shows. And he did it by sharing Libsyn data indicating that “84% of podcasts with more than 100,000 downloads were more than 51 minutes long while just 9.9% were less than 30 minutes.” By contrast, tons of largely attitudinal research has shown that listeners want shorter rather than longer shows, and the length of a show is one of

Perceptual research is survey-based research designed to build your brand and position it in a crowded marketplace. It’s strategic in nature, unlike the strictly tactical nature of music research (knowing the right songs to play is great, but if your formula is off-base or the brand is misaligned, don’t expect that listeners will pay attention). Today, perceptual research for radio brands is more important than ever because the challenges for audience attention have never bee

YouTube has announced that they will no longer support 30-second ads that viewers can’t skip, starting 2018. No more. Nada. Zip. Why? A YouTube spokesman said… We’re committed to providing a better ads experience for users online. As part of that, we’ve decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers. This change will not affect shorter ads – the 20-second videos and six-second bumpers

Now that Facebook is all but “pay for play,” what’s the best way for you to maximize your time and your investment on the platform as you build out your social media engagement for your radio brand? No longer is it worth wasting time posting for posting’s sake. And no longer is money involved in Facebook advertising so small that it doesn’t matter. So what should you do? And what shouldn’t you do? Those are the questions tackled in a new report based on an analysis of data fr

According to a new global media habits study from Kantar Millward Brown, if you think your audience hates advertising now, just wait. It is about to get a lot worse. The study spanned 39 countries and 23,907 interviews, including populations representing Gen X (35–49), Gen Y (20–34) and Gen Z (16–19). According to the report: It’s particularly tricky to get Gen Z to engage, because they are highly discriminating and more averse to advertising in general. In the online space G

Aren’t you tired of PPM yet? From Tom Taylor Now: How many PPMs does Nielsen allow in one household? Answer – up to 16. Does that sound large? One current in-tab household has 13 meters, and nine of them belong to people under the age of 17. Nielsen likes stability on the panel, and this particular household has been in the sample for quite a while. Imagine replacing them when they leave after as much as a two-year tenure. That will require placement into multiple households

Audio advertising sucks. It just does. Face it. But it doesn’t have to.Audio advertising sucks. But it doesn't have to. #hivio Click To Tweet That’s a main takeaway from new research into the types of audio advertising listeners prefer. This research was presented for the first time anywhere at the recent hivio conference in LA, and you can watch the entire presentation (it’s only 13 minutes long) below. This is required viewing if you’re in the business of selling ads to age

So people are freaking out about the new Edison data indicating that consumers – that’s you and me – switch stations 22 times in an average commute. …unless you’re my beautiful wife, in which case you switch stations 2200 times in an average commute. Is that number (the 22) shocking? I don’t know why. Anybody who has ever been in a car has seen this firsthand. I know we want to imagine that no advertiser will ever figure this out, but hey, advertisers know this already. They

A recent study set out to determine the difference between hearing music aloud and together with others (the way radio tends to be consumed) versus hearing that music alone (e.g., via earbuds or headphones). The study, sponsored by Sonos and Apple Music, came to this conclusion (reported in Mashable): With music being played aloud, families reported spending 13% more time together and were in closer proximity to each other (20% more of the time). That second stat may have som

“Share-of-ear.” It’s a mantra among broadcasters nowadays. And I’m going to explain why you should forget about it. You know what it means: We compare the time listened to radio with time devoted to other audio forms: Online radio, podcasting, mp3’s, whatever. The theory holds that any platform’s “share-of-ear” comes largely at the expense of any other audio-centric platform. So when podcasting listenership grows, that means radio listening (for example) might shrink. I can o

Nobody had ever done this before. What if you take the leading programmers to one popular format and ask them a slew of in-depth questions about the way they program their stations, how they conduct fundraising, how they market and what they spend, how they perceive the priorities for their brands, etc? Then what if you correlate all that data with ratings outcomes? This gives you the ability to see what best practices – what “secrets of success” – characterize the highest-ra

In the second release from a new study of radio industry thought-leaders, managers say their radio brands can make more money by monetizing streams separately with their own spot inventory than by simulcasting those spots with the over-the-air brands. The study was conducted by Mark Ramsey Media by telephone in November and December, 2014 among more than 100 top-50 market radio General Managers, Sales Managers, Digital Executives, and Program Directors. 56% of these managers

In the first release from a new study Mark Ramsey Media just conducted among radio industry thought-leaders, managers expect a dramatic rise in the fraction of their overall revenue that will derive from digital sources. The study was conducted by telephone in November and December, 2014, among more than 100 top-50 market radio General Managers, Sales Managers, Digital Executives, and Program Directors. It’s Mark Ramsey Media’s first annual “Pulse” study that measures attitud

In an article aptly titled “Young People Don’t Care About Newspapers, Old People Don’t Care About Smartphones,” Business Insider quoted an Ofcom study contrasting the responses of persons 16-24 to folks 75 and over. The question? “What media would you miss the most?” And here’s the chart: BI writes: People between the ages of 16 and 24, for example, would not blink an eye if newspapers and magazines went extinct; smartphones are the “must-have” device of the younger generatio

A recent Borrell report provided a slew of predictions for the media space over the next ten years, but none was more alarming to radio broadcasters than Prediction No. 4: The prediction: Car-dashboard options diminish AM/FM radio listening. Half the terrestrial stations disappear. Only those with strongest and most valuable audiences remain. Smartphones become radios. The knee-jerk response to this for folks in the industry is to reject it out of hand. But let’s look closer

Nielsen recently released a study that was not representative of the entire population. I know, so what else is new, right? Actually, this was their intention this time. It was a study of 5,985 respondents 18+ years old who either use or are extremely, very, or somewhat interested in at least one of the three connected life technologies—connected home, car and/or wearable technology. It is, in other words, the low-hanging fruit of the connected car market. The Connected Car A

I am stridently pro-consumer. I believe that if we focus on what consumers show us they want, then we will have more consumers, happier consumers, and a healthier business overall. This is the thinking that has driven all my successful audience research efforts for years. So it was with much disappointment that I reviewed the recent research project produced by Coleman Research for NextRadio, financed by the NAB. Coleman has a well-deserved strong reputation, but this deeply