ARBITRON WILL MEASURE PANDORA

 

http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2596083&spid=30800

 

12-20-2012

At some point, advertisers will be able to see Arbitron ratings for radio and Pandora side-by-side. That's according to Nielsen's President of Global Media Products Steve Hasker (pictured). Hasker told Bloomberg, "We want to cover as much of the media landscape as possible and be helpful to our clients in that way." Up until now there has never been any indication that Pandora is an Arbitron client. It sounds like that will change when Nielsen takes over. This has been a touchy subject for radio operators. Pandora has come hard after radio's revenue and radio is, by far, Arbitron's number one customer.

Pandora CEO Joseph Kennedy has often compared Pandora to radio, not only overall but specifically in large radio markets. He says Pandora is reinventing radio. He would compare Pandora listeners in total to a specific radio station. Would that matter to an advertising agency? Maybe not. If Pandora says we have X number of listeners in New York City and Z100 has X number of listeners, would an advertiser really care? Or would an advertiser want Pandora to show the number of listeners it has in New York City tuning in to the same format as Z100 so the comparison is apples to apples.

Back on December 4th Kennedy said, "with the combination of increased market share and integration into ad-buying platforms, we will make our most significant investment yet in disrupting the radio advertising market." While Pandora would not reveal what those ad-buying platforms were one might speculate Kennedy may have been referring to ratings. Pandora says it now has over 7% of all radio listening in the U.S. Although there is no real way to confirm that.

During the Nielsen/Arbitron conference call this week, incoming Arbitron CEO Sean Creamer said the marketplace is working out the definition of radio. "Arbitron's job is to measure radio no matter how radio is defined. We need to measure pure-plays. We never said we would not measure anyone." Hasker told Bloomberg, "Marketers are looking for simpler ways to compare their ad spending across media. As part of that effort, Nielsen plans to start measuring popular digital radio services such as Pandora after the acquisition." It sounds from Hasker's comments that the definition of radio has already been made and Pandora is in the club.

There's no question consumers are moving more and more to their devices. They listen to music, radio stations and Internet radio on their smartphones and tablets and that trend is expected to rise. Prognosticators are also saying ad spending on mobile devices will continue to grow over the next five years. Perhaps Pandora is the new radio. It offers consumers fewer commercials and advertisers super-targeted ads. The radio industry continues to stuff as many commercials into every hour without seeing any increase in revenue and has yet to figure out how to make serious money with its streams.

Pandora can certainly provide advertisers with metrics on listeners radio has never been able to provide. And the "sample size" is huge compared to what radio can provide. Radio has always been able to provide advertisers with localism, big promotions, great ideas, huge personalities and other value Pandora may never be able to provide. Your local car dealer probably cares about that but does Madison Avenue? As we've been reporting, radio needs to understand advertising decisions are being made based on data not because "Big Chuck" is coming over Saturday morning with hot dogs and balloons. Can those two definitions be reconciled so you can call them both "radio"?

Arbitron Deal Would Extend Nielsen’s Reach Into Consumer Habits

 

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/with-arbitron-deal-nielsen-extends-its-overview-of-consumer-habits/#h[]

Dec 18th, 2012

 

By BEN SISARIO

NYSE Euronext, via Business WireDavid Calhoun, chief of Nielsen, said the $1.26 billion deal would help it gauge behavior.

¶7:54 p.m. | Updated Consumers today are gleaners of information, moving swiftly from cellphones to newspapers, tablets to radio and social media to television. The question for advertisers is how to reach them across a fragmented environment.

¶The potential for tracking consumers wherever they go was the rationale behind the announcement on Tuesday that Nielsen Holdings, the company that decades ago standardized the television advertising market through its ratings system, had reached an agreement to buy its radio industry counterpart, Arbitron, for $1.26 billion.

¶The deal, which is subject to approval by federal regulators, would expand Nielsen’s already extensive portfolio of tools to analyze consumers’ overlapping media habits. According to Nielsen, it would also increase the number of hours a day that it can monitor an average American’s media consumption, to seven from the current five.

¶“That is a very big deal when your job is to measure how consumers ultimately form and change behaviors,” David L. Calhoun, Nielsen’s chief executive, said in a conference call with investors and Wall Street analysts.

¶Nielsen is best known for its TV ratings, but it also tracks sales of books, music and other consumer products, and measures media habits online. On Monday, the company announced a partnership with Twitter to rank television shows by their levels of social media chatter.

¶Its goal is to gain as thorough a picture of consumer behavior as possible to allow advertisers and media companies to make more effective investments.

¶“These integrated, innovative capabilities will enable broader measurement of consumer media behavior in more markets around the world,” Steve Hasker, Nielsen’s president of global media products and advertiser solutions, said in a statement.

¶So far, though, the idea of a complete picture of consumer media behavior is still elusive, and there is no guarantee that the addition of Arbitron would provide it.

¶“You want them to be able to stitch everything together as seamlessly as possible,” said Jed Meyer, a former Nielsen executive who is the United States director of research at the Annalect Group, part of the Omnicom Media Group, the media division of Omnicom Group. “That’s the promise, but the question for this and other mergers is whether they can execute.”

¶The merger has the potential to bring together the two companies’ complementary strengths. Nielsen collects a broad amount of data from television, retail and the Internet, and has wide global reach, but analysts say that it has had little success tracking consumers’ habits while they are on the go.

¶Arbitron, however, does just a fraction of its business outside the United States but in recent years has been exploring new methods of mobile tracking. Its Portable People Meter, a pager-size device, has given the radio industry a far more detailed picture of its audience than was available before.

¶A combined Nielsen-Arbitron, several radio executives and analysts said, could help draw advertising to the medium. Last year ad spending was $17.4 billion, flat from the year before and still down about 18 percent from prerecession levels, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau.

¶Radio consumption has held strong in the Internet age, as people stay plugged in to their favorite stations, particularly while driving. According to Arbitron’s most recent statistics, more than 241 million people in the United States, or about 92 percent of the population age 12 and over, listen to the radio each week. And unlike television, a large majority of the ads on broadcast radio are for local businesses.

¶The proposed merger has also drawn concerns about consolidation in the global media research field, which has become dominated by a handful of firms like Kantar Media, comScore, Ipsos and now potentially the combined Nielsen-Arbitron.

¶“Nielsen is no stranger to radio,” said Paul Heine, a senior editor at the trade publication Inside Radio. “It has measured it before as an alternative to Arbitron, and there is some concern in the radio business that it further tightens the monopoly on measurement.”

¶But several analysts said that given Arbitron’s relatively small size, the deal was not likely to face major hurdles with regulators. Nielsen, active in more than 100 countries, had $5.5 billion in revenue last year. Arbitron had $422 million in revenue last year, but, with $53 million in net income, had wider profit margins.

¶Among the other hopes for the merger were that it could lead to more measurement of online services and link Arbitron’s value for local advertising with Nielsen’s more extensive, national data.

¶Despite the growth of Internet radio, services like Pandora, which has more than 60 million regular listeners, is not tracked by Arbitron and therefore lacks “apples to apples” audience data to lure potential advertisers. Such measurements have been sought after by advertisers, particularly as major broadcasters like Clear Channel Communications embrace online radio, but Arbitron has been slow to introduce a system that would put online and offline listening on equal footing.

¶Laura Martin, an entertainment and media analyst at Needham & Company, said that Nielsen’s expertise and its aggressive push into online markets could be an advantage in exploiting Arbitron’s local radio data.

¶“It’s interesting that they will have the management I.Q. of Nielsen in charge of local advertising possibilities,” Ms. Martin said. “The Internet is moving at the speed of light, and the next big promise of advertising cash is sitting in local. In Nielsen’s hands those relationships may turn into something that Arbitron didn’t think of.”

¶Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting. .

"HÁ UMA GUERRA PELO TALENTO NO BRASIL"

 

http://epocanegocios.globo.com/Inspiracao/Carreira/noticia/2012/12/ha-uma-guerra-pelo-talento-no-brasil.html

 

A AFIRMAÇÃO É DE GREG SCILEPPI, PRESIDENTE DAS OPERAÇÕES INTERNACIONAIS DA CONSULTORIA ROBERT HALF

GREG SCILEPPI, PRESIDENTE DA ROBERT HALF (FOTO: DIVULGAÇÃO)

Medo de perder o emprego? Se você é executivo, pode ficar tranquilo. Há uma verdadeira batalha entre as empresas ara contratar talentos. Pelo menos é o que diz Greg Scileppi, ele próprio um executivo, especializado em aproximar as empresas desses profissionais disputados. Esse americano de 50 anos de idade – metade deles dedicados ao headhunting - é presidente das operações internacionais da consultoria Robert Half, uma das maiores empresas do mundo em recrutamento executivo. Scileppi gerencia todas as operações do grupo fora dos EUA, ou seja, em um universo formado por 20 países e alguns milhares de empresas ansiosas por novos soldados na disputa corporativa.

O próprio Scileppi é um exemplo de como as portas podem se abrir para os executivos. Começou a carreira como desenvolvedor de softwares, mas logo percebeu que gostava muito mais de gente do que de computadores. Procurou a Robert Half para arrumar um novo emprego e acabou ele próprio sendo recrutado como recrutador, em 1988. A paixão mútua foi duradoura. Subiu de cargo durante duas décadas, período no qual a empresa passou de uma operação de US$ 70 milhões para US$ 4 bilhões. De passagem pelo Brasil, onde a consultoria possui um escritório há cinco anos, Scileppi fala sobre crise financeira, mercado de trabalho para executivos e os efeitos da tecnologia sobre o processo de contratação.

Como está a demanda por executivos no Brasil?
Esse mercado passa por um momento de aquecimento no Brasil. O interessante no Brasil é que o índice de desemprego geral de 8% não se reflete na área executiva, que exibe um indicador bem menor, algo entre 1% e 2%. Como o número de profissionais qualificado não é tão grande, há aqui uma verdadeira guerra pelo talento. É por isso que nossa operação brasileira é uma das que mais crescem em todo o mundo.
A crise financeira mudou as características que as empresas procuram em seus executivos?
Muitas coisas mudam: quais setores contratam ou deixam de contratar, por exemplo. Isso normalmente é definido pela situação econômica momentânea. Mas eu já acompanhei nove diferentes crises ao longo da minha carreira. E o que nunca muda é a necessidade de talento. Em um momento positivo, esse talento vai ajudar sua organização a crescer mais que as demais; em momentos de queda, vai criar mais eficiência, margem maior, e assim ajudar sua organização a sobreviver ao panorama desafiador.

Quais são os fatores mais importantes na hora de escolher um candidato?
É necessário encontrar um equilíbrio entre a capacidade técnica e os fatores comportamentais... O lado técnico é extremamente importante como uma base, mas saber se encaixar na cultura da organização também. Há uma diferença entre ser capaz de fazer o serviço e deixar o serviço pronto. Quem tem o lado técnico tem maior chance de ser chamado para uma vaga, quem se adapta ao ambiente da empresa tem mais chance de ficar por lá um longo tempo. Isso é fundamental para o objetivo que empresa e empregado deveriam ter: criar uma relação de longo prazo.

O tempo médio que as pessoas passam no mesmo emprego tem diminuído?
Há uma série de fatores em jogo aí. A explosão da tecnologia tem aberto espaço para uma mobilidade maior, com novas oportunidades. Mas as pessoas que se sentem identificadas com a cultura da empresa e que percebem oportunidades de crescimento continuam mostrando muita estabilidade no emprego, da mesma forma que acontece há décadas. Quando essas oportunidades não existem, aí sim a tendência é de uma mudança mais constante. É por isso que as maiores companhias do mundo têm um turnover tão baixo... Elas continuam a inovar e a criar soluções que facilitem o progresso das pessoas dentro das instituições.

Como promover essas oportunidades no ambiente de trabalho?
Priorizando as contratações internas para sustentar o crescimento orgânico e abrindo diversas rotas de crescimento na carreira. Isso pode significar fazer o mesmo serviço em uma cidade diferente, ou uma promoção, ou um serviço diferente no mesmo local. Eu mesmo sou uma prova viva desse processo: em 24 anos de Robert Half passei de recrutador a presidente.

O que pesa mais na escolha de um novo emprego: salário ou oportunidade de crescimento?
Eu acredito firmemente que as pessoas trocam de emprego atrás de oportunidades melhores. Um salário melhor acaba sendo um resultado natural desse processo, mas não a sua força propulsora. O desafio, a chance de crescer, o interesse de ser parte de algo maior, tudo isso é fundamental para as pessoas. Elas olham para novos estímulos, novas formas de trabalhar, uma nova motivação.

De que forma as novas tecnologias influenciam no processo de recrutamento?
Nós estamos experimentando bastante dentro da empresa para descobrirmos o que realmente funciona. O truque é inovar sem perder a relação pessoal. Então estamos praticando o uso de videoconferências via tablet, por exemplo. Isso nos permite ver nossos candidatos com muito mais frequência, já que reduz a necessidade de deslocamentos. Imagine o quanto isso economiza e tempo em uma cidade como São Paulo, onde é normal perder duas horas preso no trânsito.
A mesma coisa vale para nossos clientes, as empresas. Temos um processo diferente das outras firmas. Quando eles veem ao nosso escritório, ficam por aqui o dia inteiro e aproveitam para conhecer um grande número de candidatos para a mesma posição. Isso permite que eles usem aquele período de tempo para se concentrarem no processo de seleção e tenham a chance de julgar os candidatos de uma vez, ao invés do método tradicional: entrevistar um; esperar alguns dias, entrevistar outro e, no final, comparar notas. É um processo que economiza tempo e gera melhores resultados.

---

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Nielsen Acquiring Arbitron in Bid to Expand Measurement Abilities Multiplatform radio and TV engagement a priority

 

http://www.adweek.com/news/television/nielsen-acquiring-arbitron-bid-expand-measurement-abilities-146025

 

ByAnthony Crupi

• December 18 2012
• Television

Photo: Getty Images

Nielsen Holdings has signed an agreement to acquire radio ratings and marketing research firm Arbitron as it seeks to expand its measurement abilities, the company announced today.

The deal, which is worth an estimated $1.26 billion, is subject to regulatory approvals. Should it pass muster, the alliance would allow both research firms to share panels, thereby bringing an unprecedented breadth and accuracy to television and radio ratings.

For Nielsen, bringing Arbitron’s Portable People Meter technology and mobile/app measurement into the fold should help meet broadcasters' demands for more accountable measurement of second-screen viewing.

Arbitron has measured out-of-home viewing of major sports events for Turner Broadcasting Systems and CBS. While media buyers have refused to accept guarantees against out-of-home deliveries, estimates of ancillary viewership have long been baked into sports CPMs.

Television executives have been anxious for Nielsen to improve its measurement of nonlinear deliveries. In what is shaping up to be the weakest broadcast season in history, broadcasters largely are not being compensated for viewing on tablets and mobile devices.

Last week, CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves spoke to investors about the urgency of improving measurement of second-screen viewing. “One of the things looking forward that we need to have happen is for Nielsen to get better,” Moonves said. “There are a lot of people watching our shows that are unreported.”

Arbitron recently joined forces with sports giant ESPN and the digital-media research firm comScore in a bid to measure media consumption patterns across radio, TV, mobile phones, tablets and personal computers.

“Arbitron will help Nielsen better solve for unmeasured areas of media consumption, including streaming audio and out of home,” said Nielsen CEO David Calhoun, by way of announcing the deal. “The high level of engagement with radio and TV among rapidly growing multicultural audiences makes this central to Nielsen’s priorities.”

William T. Kerr, president and CEO of Arbitron, said that combining Nielsen’s global capabilities and scale with Arbitron’s data would provide advertisers and media clients with better insights into consumer behavior and marketing ROI.

“We will also bring local clients greater visibility to empower more precise advertising placement and campaign effectiveness,” noted Steve Hasker, Nielsen’s president of global media products and advertiser solutions.

Together, Nielsen and Arbitron generated revenue of $6 billion for the year ended Sept. 30.

How the cloud will evolve beyond 'cheap and deep' in 2013

Dave Wright is the founder and CEO of SolidFire.

The initial rush to the cloud has been led by businesses moving data for backup and archival purposes and for less mission-critical use cases such as testing, development, and web hosting. This mirrors the early days of server virtualization where test/dev was the predominant early use case. As virtualization technology matured, security, performance, and availability concerns were addressed and server virtualization reached into production environments.

Heading into 2013 and beyond, the evolution of cloud computing will likely take a similar path. Using the cloud as a "cheap and deep" repository to host data is now well established. More than 1 trillion objects stored in Amazon Web Services' S3 object storage should serve as sufficient evidence. What is exciting is that we are only scratching the surface of the cloud opportunity.

From an enterprise perspective, the public cloud is an extension (albeit sometimes rogue in its current form) to traditional on-premise IT resources such as compute and storage. While accounting for only a small percentage of IT operations today, there is little debate that a significant percentage of incremental workloads are being executed in the cloud.

For the cloud market to realize its full potential requires a continued push into the business and mission-critical application workloads that remain mostly on premise today. If Cloud 1.0 is about hosting business data in the cloud, Cloud 2.0 will be defined by the move to host production applications in the cloud. But where does the burden lie to drive this shift?

There are two constituencies that bear the responsibility of pushing this movement forward: the service providers that build and run clouds, and the technology vendors crafting the key infrastructure building blocks. Many players are vying for market leadership within each segment. Service providers going after this opportunity span everyone from basic web hosters, managed/dedicated hosting providers, co-location providers, telcos/operators, data center outsourcers, and IaaS pure-plays. Heck, even online bookstores and search engines are already part of the game.

The magnitude of the opportunity at stake in the cloud is also driving a massive innovation cycle from start-ups in the infrastructure vendor community. Without the right tools for the job, service providers will fail to drive the economics, performance, security, and reliability necessary to realize the full potential of the cloud. Legacy systems and software were not designed with this job in mind, and few service providers have the engineering resources to build the infrastructure themselves. Cloud infrastructure presents a whole different set of operating constraints that were not a consideration when most legacy vendors were crafting their wares. The scale, quality-of-service, automation and efficiency demanded from a cloud environment are unlike anything we have seen from traditional enterprise IT environments.

One area where innovation is occurring in cloud infrastructure is high-performance storage. Unlike compute, where wide ranges of price and performance options are available, cost-effective storage with predictable performance is not readily available in the cloud today. Attacking this problem is central to driving more and more applications to the cloud.

A key enabler of this innovation is solid-state storage and the dramatic price/performance advantage of flash over spinning disk. Applied to traditional IT cost centers, this technology is interesting, but when applied to profit-driven cloud services it is game-changing. Amazon's Provisioned IOPS, launched earlier this year, is an early example of this extended innovation sequence where component level technologies, enable new architectures that drive new services. The combination of infrastructure innovations (flash) and the execution environment shift (cloud) are feeding on each other to enable a new opportunity for enterprise CIOs: run business-critical applications in the cloud with confidence.

So where do we go from here? Heading into 2013, the burden of proof is squarely on vendors and cloud service providers to deliver evolutionary new products and services. These innovations will drive the performance and economics required to extend the public cloud to an even wider range of workloads. If all goes well, 2013 will be the year that the industry comes together to move beyond "cheap and deep" and really start advancing the way the world uses the cloud.

Dave Wright helped start GameSpy Industries in 2008, and he led the team that created a backend infrastructure for millions of gamers. GameSpy merged with IGN Entertainment in 2004. Dave served as Chief Architect for IGN and lead technology integration with FIM/MySpace after IGN was acquired by News Corp in 2005. In 2007, Dave founded Jungle Disk, a pioneer in cloud-based storage and backup solutions for consumers and businesses. Jungle Disk was acquired by Rackspace in 2008, and Dave worked closely with the Rackspace Cloud division. In late 2009, Dave left Rackspace to start SolidFire.

Dusting photo via Richard Harrison/Flickr

Filed under: Cloud

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mentira sobre ECAD e direitos autorais nos jornais

 

 

gritabr

G.R.I.T.A – para acordar o artista brasileiro

mentira sobre ECAD e direitos autorais nos jornais

Posted on 14 de dezembro de 2012 by Leoni

Hoje a coluna do Ancelmo Gois do O Globo publicou uma nota insinuando que tanto governo quanto artistas favoráveis à fiscalização do ECAD estariam de olho nas receitas milionárias do escritório. Não sei quem é a fonte que espalha tais mentiras – embora possa imaginar quem tem motivos para isso -, mas não podemos deixar que elas se espalhem.

Em primeiro lugar, contrariamente às loucuras alarmistas que têm sido espalhadas na rede, com a fiscalização o Estado não vai tomar o lugar do ECAD que continuará a existir e a fazer seu papel, mas tendo que prestar contas a um órgão criado para organizar e fiscalizar o direito autoral no país.

Em segundo lugar, o Estado não ficará com nenhum centavo para exercer essa fiscalização.

Terceiro, quem fica com uma parcela exagerada dessas receitas é o sistema ECAD – escritório mais sociedades – que morde 25% da grana dos compositores e que distribui recompensas para seus funcionários como se fosse uma empresa regular e não uma sociedade sem fins lucrativos. Ora, se há lucro – o que seria intrigante – ele deve ser dos criadores.

Na nota, o jornalista também fala de uma divisão da classe entre defensores e detratores da atual diretoria. Ora, não há artistas que não desejem mais transparência, eficência e justiça tanto na arrecadação quanto na distribuição de Direitos Autorais. Os que vão a Brasília fazer lobby contra a fiscalização do ECAD são todos funcionários das Sociedades que o compõem. Sandra de Sá trabalha para a UBC, Danilo Caymmi para a ABRAMUS e assim por diante. Como o escritório não é uma entidade de classe não pode falar em nome dos artistas ou compositores.

O ECAD tem feito uma campanha forte para evitar a transparência. Sem fiscalização os diretores se eternizam no poder e podem cometer os inúmeros ilícitos apontados pela CPI sem preocupação com punições.

Para o bem da informação pública esperamos que Ancelmo Gois possa esclarecer seus leitores sobre a real situação das mudanças urgentes pelas quais deve passar a gestão coletiva de direitos autorais. Que a verdade prevaleça!

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Top 10 Research Discoveries of 2012 to Help you Win in 2013

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  Every week during the last year, we've shared dramatic findings from our 2012 national study of over 1000 Adults 18-49.  We have focused on actionable results that you can use to your advantage today.  And even more importantly, we have illuminated dozens of facts that Arbitron does not want you to know about PPM panels.  You can use this information to play the PPM game and maximize ratings success. 

  Arbitron continues to claim that the PPM sample is representative of the total population.  Nonsense.  Our research has consistently shown that, aside from representing the population correctly in age and gender and ethnicity, this is far from true.  A PPM prospect is very different from the rest of the population, in attitudes, lifestyle, communication habits and how Radio is used.  That's why we investigated and reported what kind of consumer is more likely to accept a PPM, and why.  Here are 10 critical things we have learned:

  1.  Consumers who are more digitally active are much more willing than others to take a PPM. 

  • Here we are, looking for consumers who are willing to carry a spy-mic on their person for months, to collect personal data for commercial use, in return for a few hundred bucks.  And we are doing so smack dab in the age where ubiquitous and completely open digital communication and data-mining are on the advance, but fighting pushback on over-messaging and on compromised privacy.   So the great news is that the PPM Prospect isn't nearly so concerned about privacy or over-messaging, and he is likely to be quite comfortable with ubiquitous and completely open digital communication and data-mining.  Smartphone users, heavy Internet users, and highly-active Facebook users are each much more likely than the average consumer to accept a PPM.  People who already carry a digital device around with them are more comfortable accommodating another one, and less technophobic, than those without a smartphone.  The heavy Internet user is likely to be already well-assimilated into, and presumably more accepting of, a culture of constant digital connectivity and easy access to information.  The Facebook power-user is quite comfortable living in a high-exposure info-sharing fishbowl. 

  2.  PPM Prospects are much more reachable by mass e-mails, direct mail and radio station texting. 

  • Not only is this a population that we can attempt to reach via mass-messaging, they actively consumes mass-messaging.  Perfect for modern digital and direct mail advertising tactics, with a lot less waste.   A radio station's hit rate for digital and direct-mail tactics, among PPM Prospects, is remarkably higher than it is among those we don't care about.  The station that frequently texts meaningful content to its base will be reaching a disproportionate number of meter wearers. 

  3.  PPM Prospects are social animals, who particularly value Radio for the human contact and interaction. 

  • We see dramatic differences between PPM Prospects and non-Prospects in their desire for the human element, in mornings and beyond.  The more human-being-centered a given consumer's morning radio benefit is, the more likely he is to influence the ratings.  Those who do not typically listen before 8:00, as well as those who say they are listening "to get energized" or "to relax" are only slightly more likely to say "yes" than to say "no" to our theoretical PPM question.  Meanwhile, those who say they listen "to be informed" have a much stronger yes:no ratio, more than 5:3.  Those who say they listen "to have a companion" boast the best yes:no ratio of all, close to 7:3.   We also found that consumers who say they have no favorite morning show (a majority of the sample), or whose favorite show is "mostly music" are about evenly divided between yes and no, while those whose favorite show is "mostly talking" or "balanced" are much more likely to say yes.  Moving beyond mornings to all-day music listening, we also found that consumers who value DJ-provided information about the music are more likely to say yes to the meter than consumers who do not. 

  4.  People who trust Radio are much more likely to accept a PPM. 

  • Consumers who believe in Radio and what it does for them are much more likely to participate in the ratings.  We corroborated this finding with the results of three different questions.  Those who feel that stations do a good job of providing them and their peers with high quality programming say yes at a 2:1 ratio, while those who disagree are evenly divided.  Those who place high trust in the station they turn to for news and information say yes at a similar 2:1 ratio, while those with low trust are evenly divided.  Those who say that radio stations do care about the listener also say yes at a 2:1 ratio, while those who say that we are self-centered and self-obsessed say yes at only a 5:4 ratio. 
  • So, earning trust for our reliable information, stressing a genuine commitment to the listener, overcoming cynicism, and nurturing good feelings about the radio listening experience in general will deliver our station more meters.  Conversely, regardless of how much they are actually listening to us, we are going to underperform in meters if our consumers perceive us as non-reliable for information, not serving consumer needs, or just singing songs and carrying signs that mostly say "Hooray for our side!"

  5.  Those who feel close attachment to a station, either for music or for mornings, are much more likely to accept a PPM. 

  • Relationships do matter.  It sure looks like one of the motivators to accept a meter may be a desire of the Truly Passionate Station Fan to send a message about it to The Ubiquitous Them of The Media.  Thus, the game is more complicated than "the guy with the most listeners will win."  It's a lot closer to being "among the players who have large audiences, the guy whose audience has the most passion will win." 
  • It's this simple:  plenty of people do not have a favorite music station, but they are less likely to accept a PPM than those who do. 
  • And those who do have a favorite music station, but aren't really crazy about it, are a lot less likely to accept a PPM than those who really love the station. 
  • Similarly, while a majority of consumers do not really have a morning show they embrace as "favorite," they are less likely to accept a PPM than those who do have a favorite morning show.  And folks who not only have such a favorite show, but give it long daily TSL, are more likely than those who have a favorite but listen to it for a shorter daily interval. 

  6.  The overwhelming majority of PPM Prospects are motivated by the money. 

  • The PPM Prospect is saying yes, in order to receive some anticipated benefits, that (s)he perceives to be worth the anticipated costs. 
  • The Non-Prospect, on the other hand, says no, perceiving that these benefits are not worth the costs. 
  • And the key benefit today is cash.  In the PPM game, money means a lot more than it did in the diary days.  It is the overwhelming single motivating reason, regardless of income level, when a consumer says yes.  Nine in 10 consumers who agree to be electronically monitored by the radio industry cite the money, far more than cite other potential benefits. 
  • Just because money is the prime driver, the key is still the "worth it."  Plenty of lower-income folks, for whatever reason, still say "not worth it," while a significant minority of upper-income folks nonetheless think "worth it."  But whether it's about making ends meet or about indulging in a luxury purchase, the bottom line is that most of these folks carry the thing so they can get the k-ching.

  7.  Starting at mid-income, many PPM Prospects are also motivated by the psychic benefit of having their voice heard. 

  • The other 10 percent (allegedly not motivated by the money) tend to be part of a larger group that cites "having your voice heard by Media Companies" as an important benefit.  It turns out that the PPM consumer is defined mostly by one or both of these two motivating benefits.  For those at the lowest economic level, non-cash benefits are relatively weak factors.  But at household incomes above $50,000, here's your Venn diagram:  60% in the non-overlapping "only want money" area.  10% in the non-overlapping "only want to be heard" area.   Plus another big 30% in the "want to be heard and also want the money" area.  So it is fair to think of that "Hear Me!" factor as a huge influence on the pool.  For as many as two in five meter-wearers, it may act as a tie-breaker when the financial benefit alone might not have been a slam-dunk. 

  8.  High-income households are much less likely to take a PPM. 

  • Seeing the benefit as worth it is of course what separates the Prospects from the rest.  Accordingly, the data are not surprising and confirm what benefits are driving.  Obviously, Arbitron money is going to make more of a difference to a person at the lower income levels.  The benefits outweigh the costs for him, but not for someone of the same age, gender, and race who makes a lot more money.   Unlike Neilsen TV ratings panels, which are in fact income-balanced, Arbitron is collecting data from whoever will cooperate.  And those tend to be the people who need the cash the most.  To pretend otherwise not only flies in the face of common sense, it flies in the face of the hard data.  Our ratings fate is in the hands of a pool that is disproportionately downscale.

  9.Parents Are More Willing than Non-parents to Take a PPM. 

  • The greatest economic need tends to be among parents.  Parents are used to compromising their lifestyles in order to make ends meet, and that can include carrying that damned electronic thing around for months.  Thus, it's not surprising that people with kids at home are lots more likely to say yes than people of the same age and gender and race without kids at home. 

  10.PPM Prospects are much more influenced by contesting than non-Prospects. 

  • Arbitron has given us a methodology that targets exactly the people we can reach the most easily with marketing, targets the people who care more about radio, and gives us two very clear motivating drivers (money and the desire to be heard) to follow to find the target, and there's even more?  Yes.  The really cool thing about the folks who will carry this device for a few hundred bucks is that not surprisingly they are much more motivated by big prize contesting than the average bear.  They freely admit that they are open to changing listening habits for a shot at big bucks.  Accordingly, we can help ourselves bigtime by focusing our targeting on people who can become passionate about us.  And just to insure make sure we get their attention, offering them a big promotional love bribe. 

  The 2013 study is out of the field.  We'll be back in January with updated information and insights into the Radio world.  Thanks for reading.

   

  
  

Sent from my iPad

3 Effective Ways Social Media Drives Sales

"Social tactics are not meaningful sales drivers", according to one of Forrester's recent reports.

And in a way, they're right.

You can't sell directly with social media. At least, not very effectively.

Because it's like trying to pick up a date at a funeral. Wrong place, wrong time.

It will never convert like Google AdWords, where people show intent by typing in exactly what they're looking for.

And it will never be as effective as a triggered, event-based email campaign, which has been shown to provide a 600% lift over traditional outbound programs by Gartner (another market research firm).

But that doesn't mean social media is worthless.

In fact, it can significantly drive revenue in an indirect, hard-to-measure kind of way.

Here are 3 effective ways social media can improve your bottom line.

 

1. The Zero Moment of Truth

Think about the last time you bought a car.

You probably didn't walk in to a dealership blind, forced to negotiate for hours.

After a few minutes Googling, you can find the Kelly Blue Book value for the exact car you want, the dealer's profit markup on that exact model, and even individual reviews of the salesmen themselves.

Buying a car is different today in the information age, because you can easily do proactive research in just a few minutes. And this doesn't only apply to commodities.

For example, marketing for doctors is now a necessary evil. Because you can use Zagat (which connects with Google+) to rate physicians based on trust, communication, availability, and office environment. This has already happened for Wellpoint and Anthem BlueCross BlueShield members, according to Rheumatologist.org.

This critical first-touch with your brand is dubbed the "Zero Moment of Truth" by Google. And it's critical you have a marketing strategy that will connect with people who are doing this type of proactive research.

Social media is one of the best tactics you can use, because it will quickly give your company visibility that used to cost millions in mass-media advertising. Here's a perfect example...

Let's say I'm hungry for pizza, so I go to Google and do a quick search. Here's what I see:

Sure, you recognize some big names. But look at how many small brands there are. Ones you've probably never heard of.

In traditional SEO, these small brands would NEVER be on the first page for a popular, competitive keyphrase. But look at how a Yelp review shows up first, and then each location has reviews on Google+ (which is one of the few reasons why Google Plus is essential for businesses).

And if you don't conquer this "Zero Moment of Truth", then people will just move on to the next company and you'll never get further consideration.

 

2. Engagement

Engagement is the missing link between getting awareness, and generating sales.

Because at the end of the day, people have to want to do business with you. There's too many alternatives, and too much competition today.

Seth Godin published Permission Marketing over a decade ago, which had a simple premise that still holds true: marketing is more effective when you first ask for permission to engage.

In 2009, software giants HubSpot further extended this philosophy to "inbound marketing", and have built a large business around helping companies do just that: ask for permission and follow-up.

But the problem with engagement is that it's hard to measure. That's why you can't point to a direct ROI for social media, or why large market-research firms don't recognize the true value.

So we make up KPI's instead.

People love to talk about blog comments, and track how many they're getting per post. But does that really tell you anything? And are those blog commenters really buying anything?

Many times it depends on your industry, business, content topics, and customer segments. Because a blog post about celebrity gossip will ALWAYS get more comments than one about how to use a power tool to improve your deck. (But which one do you think is more likely to lead to sales for the power tool company?)

So go deeper, and see if people are truly engaged with what you're saying. Look at data and make informed decisions. Are they staying on your site for a couple minutes? Are they viewing multiple pages per visit? Are they clicking the links in your emails? Is your conversion rate above industry averages?

Either way, social media is the perfect channel to improve engagement, because you're on the front-lines with customers 24/7. And if there are any roadblocks, then you'll hear about them immediately.

 

3. Retention

Marketing 101 says it's MUCH better to focus on existing customers, rather than having to get new ones.

But then we obsess over things like traffic and new Followers, while at the same time neglect things like customer service and systemically following-up.

One of the biggest shifts in the past few years is how you can buy software today. For example, the latest version of Microsoft Office used to set you back several hundred dollars. So you had to pay a huge lump sum up-front, without even knowing if it was any good or not.

But with improvements in technology and distribution, you now have Software as a Service (SaaS), which enables you to log-in anytime, anywhere, on any device, and access all of your information.

And instead of paying one huge lump sum up-front, you only have to pay a tiny fraction each month. In some cases, it might only be a few dollars.

Netflix only charges $8 per month for access to a HUGE library of content. That same content cost millions of dollars to produce originally. Then it cost consumers $20 per person, per viewing to watch it in theaters.

Netflix may have made enemies with bad PR moves and a botched pricing change recently. But you can't deny how incredible it is to get acccess to so much value for only $8 per month.

And yet they're a public company. The biggest in the industry.

How can any company survive by only charging $8 per month?

By focusing on the lifetime value of a customer. If the average customer stays with Netflix for 36 months, then suddenly that's a powerful revenue stream.

Social media channels have now made it infinitely easier to connect with people immediately before, during, and after their purchases.

For example, on a past campaign for a client, I set-up a process with incentives for customers to "check-in" at their physical locations. Then when the customer did, my client's employees could follow-up immediately and strike up a conversation with them in real-time -- while the customer was still standing in the location. Then my client could also follow-up a day or two later and see how each customer's experience was.

This might not be as glamorous as a multi-million dollar ad campaign. But it's much more effective in the long-run.

Because customer loyalty can be extremely profitable. These are the people who need little motivation, incentives, or flashy marketing campaigns to re-purchase.

And they're the first to recommend your product or service to their friends.

Which happens today, almost exclusively, on social media.