Radio InSights

The Nielsen PPM Presentation You Need to Watch

This is the PPM video that you need to watch.

We’ve mentioned the presentation that Dr. Barry Blesser of 25-Seven gave at the Las Vegas NAB convention. Now you have a chance to watch his talk in its entirety.

In it he explains watermarking systems like PPM and the potential problems watermarking can have in the real world.

In a half hour you’ll learn more about PPM than you’ve learned in eight years of Arbitron and Nielsen presentations. If you compete in a PPM market, you need to watch this.

Warning: It is a technical presentation delivered during the engineering lecture track so you may get lost from time to time. At least make your engineer watch it and then explain it to you.

Here’s the link to the YouTube video.

There's a rumor that Nielsen had an opportunity to share the stage with Dr. Blesser but declined to participate. Once you watch the presentation, you'll know why.

What's All the Fuss Over Voltair? How About $2 Billion.

In the course of a serious online discussion there comes a time when it attracts pundits who want to demonstrate their higher intellect and superior knowledge by offering a new perspective on the subject.

Too often they do just the opposite. Their comments reveal ill and uninformed opinions that demonstrate their lack of understanding of the subject. Rather than make useful contributions that advance the discussion, they simply add to the noise level side-tracking the discussion.

So it is with the discussion about Voltair. Failing to understand the broad implications of Voltair’s apparent success, too many people new to the issue bring up silly issues. It’s like a child around a group of adults shouting "look at me, look at me!" to get attention.

The first foray into silliness was the assertion that using Voltair was unfair. Anyone who feels this way simply doesn’t understand the economic value of a device that may significantly increase TSL and in turn a station's AQH rating.

The latest diversion is the notion that there is just too much fuss over Voltair. It is no big deal, just another way to game PPM.

"What about engagement, what about passion?" is asked, as if these things somehow make up for a flawed technology potentially undercounting radio listenership.

Suggesting that radio is too obsessed with accurate listening estimates proves that one has no concept of the role that ratings play in today’s multi-media environment and tomorrow’s programmatic marketplace.

Only a person who has never sold radio time, never tried to explain PPM’s 30% lower AQH ratings, or had to make a sales budget makes that argument.

Voltair is a canary in the coal mine, a warning that something is amiss with PPM. It is a warning with broad implications regarding radio sales and radio revenue.

A rough "back of the envelope" calculation illustrates the magnitude of the problem.

Last year US spot radio revenue totaled $13.6 billion with nearly three-quarters of the total coming from PPM markets.

How much of the revenue was ratings driven is anyone’s guess, but large market managers tell me it can be 70%+ of total spot revenue. Even in smaller PPM markets the percentage can be 50% and higher.

We’ll use the lower 50% number, knowing that it probably understates the actual average across all PPM markets.

Let’s call it $6 billion in spot sales driven by ratings.

Let’s also assume that rating sensitive sales are tied to cost-per-point. In other words, the higher a station’s AQH rating, the higher the rates it can charge.

Now for our last assumption let’s say that PPM is under-reporting AQH ratings by 30%. Remember Arbitron’s "70 is the new 100" campaign? That was an admission that AQH ratings are about 30% lower when measured by PPM.

Given those assumptions, spot radio revenues should be north of $16 billion instead of less than $14 billion.

If these assumptions are in the ballpark, PPM is costing radio a little more than $2 billion in lost revenue every year.

Let that sink in. Two billion dollars of lost revenue. Every year.

What if a higher percentage of spot sales is driven by ratings?

What if lost listening is higher than Nielsen’s estimate? We’ve seen ratings jumps over 50% at some stations after installing Voltair. (Your mileage may vary!)

It is not inconceivable that ratings driven sales revenue could double. That would put total spot radio close to $20 billion.

And if programmatic sales really do take off, you can kiss good by all those warm fuzzy reasons to buy radio. Spot sales deals will all be driven by ratings.

That’s really what the fuss is all about with Voltair.

If Voltair is helping PPM meters more consistently log radio listening, it confirms that PPM based estimates are low, that listening levels are higher than we thought, and we ought to be charging more for our spots.

If a flawed ratings system is conceivably costing radio $2 billion a year in lost revenue, that’s worth fussing over.

Next up, we’ll take a closer look at the "70 is the new 100" campaign that Arbitron hatched in 2009 as a way to explain the drop in listenership with PPM.

 

Did Arbitron Mislead RAB About PPM's Missing Listeners?

Did Arbitron mislead the Radio Advertising Bureau about how successful PPM was in capturing listening?

You be the judge.

In 2004 the Radio Advertising Bureau investigating the technical aspects of PPM posed 188 questions (PDF) to Arbitron regarding PPM. Here’s one of them:

Question: What percentage of the transmitted codes is captured? What percentage with low volume?

Answer: In November of 2004 the PPM participated in a test where 33 radio stations were played in various environments and levels of “noise.” The PPM correctly identified 59% of the total radio sessions, in an environment where the goal was 50-70%.

The RAB seemed satisfied with the response. However, there’s no evidence that the RAB actually looked at the study Arbitron referenced.

And strictly speaking, Arbitron didn’t really answer the question. More on that after we look at the study.

The study was not conducted by Arbitron. The company played no role in it other than supplying the equipment.

Makes one wonder why the company didn’t cite its own research.

The study was funded by the U.K. radio community. We first reported on the study in 2010 because it was (and remains) the only publicly released study on PPM.

We personally spoke to the lead researcher and concluded the study was thorough, objective, and we believe well designed.

The investigators created over thirteen hundred different scenarios, testing various combinations of formats, radio listening levels, and interfering ambient noise levels.

They then divided the scenarios into categories based on how easily the meters should be able to identify the stations.

As the summary at the left indicates, PPM’s performance was mixed.

In the 28 cases where conditions were nearly perfect with the radio playing loudly in a quiet room where the meter was exposed and close to the radio, PPM got it right every time.

However, as soon as conditions dropped from perfect, success rates fell rapidly.

For example, the meter was able to identify less than three-quarters (73.4%) of the stations in the next two easiest scenarios.

At level 4, a level at which the researchers thought the meter should be able to identify the station, PPM only got 151 stations right out of 266 tries, a little better than half (56.8%) of the trials.

PPM identified only one quarter (24.0%) of the stations played in the most difficult three scenarios. These were where the stations were played at a low level in a noisy environment where the meter was tucked away in a bag or jacket.

So the response to RAB that PPM correctly identified 59% of the radio stations is somewhat misleading. In the most natural scenarios where real panelists are listening to the radio, the success rate could be considerably lower.

(It should be noted that in a comparison PPM alternatives proved no better, so PPM is not alone in failing to ID stations.)

But there’s a bigger issue here.

The only criterion used in the study was identifying the station. The sessions were ten minutes long, so the meter had ample time is identify the stations.

The Question “What percentage of transmitted codes is captured?” goes well beyond identifying a station.

The RAB was not asking what percentage of stations are identified. The question is about how often the decoding process works. And the longer it works, the more quarter-hours.

Arbitron cleverly dodged the question.

So based on Arbitron’s admission to RAB that PPM captures 59% of radio station IDs over a ten minute period, that means 41% of stations are unlikely to be identified in a ten minute period.

Let’s just round that to a quarter-hour.

Isn’t it curious that Arbitron/Nielsen report that average listening spans for all formats are ten minutes?

Is it because nearly half of stations remain unidentified after ten minutes? And is this why Nielsen cross-tuning reports show that most listeners don’t switch stations, they just disappear?

The bottom line is that we still don’t know how much listening PPM is missing. Looking more closely at the study Arbitron quoted to the RAB, it could be a lot.

We don’t think the Voltair controversy is going away any time soon.

 

The Nielsen Press Release That Kills Voltair

So far Nielsen has had little substantiative to say about Voltair other than it is studying the device.

There’s one thing Nielsen could announce that would pretty much end Voltair.

Nielsen could publically declare that PPM is as accurate as it originally claimed to broadcasters, and that Voltair offers no benefit.

Imagine this press release from Nielsen:

Nielsen Audio’s PPM captures and reports 99.9% of all encoded radio listening to which panelists are exposed. The technology works equally well with all radio formats, all programming material, and is immune to environmental interference.

Case closed.

Voltair’s critics would be correct claiming that all this talk about boosting ratings is just hype, a classic example of confirmatory bias.

But don’t expect Nielsen to issue this press release.

All the evidence points to just the opposite: PPM does not capture listening to all formats and program material equally, and that ambient noise can make identifying a radio station much more difficult.

And ponder what it means if Nielsen cannot claim that PPM captures 99.9% of all encoded radio listening under all circumstances.

It means that radio listening is being under-reported by PPM.

The real story that is getting lost in all the hand-wringing over whether Voltair is fair is the implication if Voltair actually works.

If Voltair really does boost ratings, then PPM without Voltair is not capturing all radio listening.

Then we have to ask ourselves what percentage of radio listening is not being reported by PPM. Is it 10%? Is it 30%? Is it more?

Is it OK if PPM misses 10%, but not OK if PPM misses 15%? How much potential listening are you willing to lose?

Spot radio is a $14 billion business where cost-per-point matters. If actual radio listening is higher than Nielsen reports, then radio may be losing billions in potential revenue.

Some claim Voltair is unfair. Is it more fair for radio to give up potentially billions of dollars because of a flawed measurement technology?

Nielsen's PPM, Ethics, and Voltair

It had to happen.

Now an ethical debate is brewing over Voltair, and whether it is right to tinker with the PPM encoding process.

One pundit even likened Voltair to steroids, suggesting that using the box was not playing by the rules!

Even if there were some validity bringing ethics into the debate, accusing Voltair of the sin is misguided.

Every broadcaster who writes a fat check to Nielsen every month deserves to get accurate rating estimates of station listensership. Everyone.

Now we have concrete evidence that Nielsen is not giving you accurate estimates. Maybe you’re getting 70%, maybe you’re getting 90%, but in all likelihood, you’re not getting 100%.

Voltair gets you closer to the goal of 100%. That’s all it does.

If you are going to get morally indignant, direct your indignation at Nielsen, not Voltair.

As I pointed out recently, everyone who has tested Voltair has kept it. That’s more than 300 stations.

Are the 300 stations using Voltair not playing fair because they want the ratings to reflect 100% of their listening?

It seems to us that it is fiduciarily irresponsible to accept estimates that fall well short of 100% accuracy once you have reason to believe that Nielsen is under-reporting your numbers.

That’s particularly true if other stations in your market are using something that gets them closer to 100%.

Invoking fairness, playing by the rules, and steroids is a straw-man argument made by people who don’t understand PPM, don’t understand its shortcomings, and don’t understand Voltair.

Can you think of any sport that hasn’t gotten better through innovation over the last decade? Do you think that every innovation was cheating?

Are you still using typewriters to write copy? Still using carts for commercials because you think digital gives an unfair advantage?

Are you still using the same audio processing that you used a decade ago?

We believe that Nielsen should bear the cost of fixing a flawed technology that is potentially costing radio billions of dollars. They should integrate Voltair technology into a new generation of encoder, a device that is essentially unchanged from the 1990s.

However, in the meantime you have two options:

Either buy into the fairness argument, don’t buy the box, and watch other stations in your market move past you in the rankers, or bite the bullet, buy the box, and hope that one day Nielsen will reimburse you for the expense.

The choice is yours.

If you’re just getting up to speed on the Voltair debate, or maybe don’t even know what it is, here are links to previous posts that will bring you up to date. The order is latest to oldest:

The creator of Votair explains watermarking (PPM) and its shortcomings.

Nielsen prays and delays by bringing in the Media Rating Council.

25-Seven officially introduces the mystery box at NAB.

Nielsen officially declares that it still doesn’t know what to do about Voltair.

The possibility that PPM is measuring a lot of things that have nothing to do with listenership.

 As we have noted in the past, we have no financial incentive in this matter or business relationship with 25-Seven. The column at the right of the blog explains our philosophy, and we believe bringing these issues to light is consistent with our philosophy. 

The PPM Talk that Nielsen Should Have Given

Think that the technology behind PPM is simple, flawless, and without potential pitfalls?

You should have been in Las Vegas to hear Dr. Berry Blesser, Director of Research for The Telos Alliance, describe the science and technology behind watermarking like PPM, the process of embedding and then retrieving information concealed within audio.

It was the second NAB engineering talk on PPM at this year’s convention, this one delivered by the technical expert the US government called on when the Feds decided to look into complaints about PPM.

The issues and challenges Dr. Blesser discussed impact every radio station in PPM markets.

He delivered the sort of information Arbitron should have delivered in 2007 instead of the happy talk that filled NAB convention PPM sessions back then.

We’ve asked Dr. Blesser for permission to reproduce his PowerPoint presentation, and we intend to publish the presentation at Radio Insights. In the meantime here are some key issues to ponder.

The ability of PPM to determine which station a person is listening to depends primarily on the content the station is broadcasting. The greater the proportion of content between 1 kHz and 3 kHz, the “louder” the embedded information, and the more likely you’ll get credit for the listening.

That’s because PPM codes ride beneath the content in this range, so if there is no content, there is no code. You might as well be off the air.

The amount of information in this range varies by format, but even within formats, the density of 1-3 kHz information can vary, so the belief that some formats do better than others in PPM is only partially correct.

Our take: Start monitoring the spectral content of your programming. At least download a Spectrum Analyzer iPad app and pay close attention to how much content falls between 1 and 3 kHz.

Talk stations and music stations with morning shows that talk a lot may be surprised how seldom they broadcast 1-3 kHz content.

A second issue is ambient noise in the listening environment.

Ambient noise can compound the problem of getting credit. The PPM encoder adjusts the level of the codes based on the level of the content, maintaining a level that is a fraction of the content.

The problem is that the encoder has no idea what environment a listener is in, or what the ambient noise level is.

If your 1-3 kHz content is low, the code level is low too. But what if it’s drive-time and a large proportion of your panelists are listening while driving? There’s a good chance you’re not going to get credit for a portion of that listening.

Ironically, this point was driven home during a separate presentation by John Kean, Senior Technologist at NPR. He presented results of an NPR study showing how people listen to the radio in noisy environments.

People do not turn up the radio to fully compensate for greater noise. They just listen at what effectively is a lower level.

Worse yet, a great deal of ambient noise like road noise falls into the 1-3 kHz range, further burying the PPM codes.

Combine a low level code with a noisy environment, and you are probably going to lose credit for some quarter-hours.

We recently wrote that PPM can kill formats, but it turns out that the problems are much broader than we thought. Every format has some content that encodes poorly.

Radio stations using Voltair are finding that some songs don’t encode well. They are either pulling the songs or giving them sound codes so they don’t play around each other. They also may only play them late in the quarter-hour.

It turns out that compressed audio like MP3s don’t encode well. MP3s tend to lack a dense mid-range so there’s less energy for the PPM codes to hide behind.

After the presentation we tuned around the Las Vegas radio dial with a Spectrum Analyzer. The first graph at the left is a well known talk show host speaking. The energy (think volume) of the content is the vertical axis. The frequency is the horizontal axis. (Click on them to enlarge.)

Notice the absence of content in the 1-3 kHz range. This is an extreme example where the host was speaking quietly for effect. At other times there were opportunities for the encoder to inject information, but for much of the time the encoder was probably silent.

The second example is a music station close by on the dial.

The song shown here is a pop alt hit, and while it looks much different it too shows low content in the critical range relative to the rest of the spectrum. There’s more content for the PPM codes to hide behind, but not as much as other songs the station played.

Listening to Dr. Blesser speak we were reminded of the many panels at NAB Radio Shows where program directors talked about PPM and how they were shutting up their jocks.

The conventional wisdom was that PPM panelists don’t like talk. They just want lots of music. Little did we know that it was the meter not the panelist that didn’t like talk.

Much of what we’ve “learned” about PPM is just plan wrong.

 

Now Media Rating Council to Dictate Audio Processing?

The Voltair saga has now entered the Twilight Zone.

If you’ve followed developments, you know that 25-Seven has developed an audio processor that strengthens weak embedded PPM watermarks, the things that tell PPM that a panelist is listening to your radio station.

You’d think that is great news for radio stations and great news for radio in general.

We know from independent studies that PPM is not perfect, that PPM misses some listening. Any thing that moves PPM from (say) 70-80% accuracy to closer to 100% accuracy ought to get an honor from the NAB or maybe even Nielsen.

You’d think.

Nielsen has had one of the devices since last fall for evaluation. That’s about the same time that stations starting putting the units on the air.

Nielsen is still “thoroughly” examining the unit.

Radio stations didn't need a long look. Despite a quiet roll-out, word got around. It worked.

There are now something like 300 stations using the device, although few publicly admit it.

We’ve seen anywhere from single digit growth to over 50% gains in TSL. To our knowledge, not a single station has returned the unit.

Good news, right? Not to Nielsen.

Not only has Nielsen reserved judgement, they’ve decided that they want the Media Rating Council (MRC) to bless Voltair.

MRC deliberations make a mafia get-together look like a city council meeting. Deliberations are secret, criteria for granting accreditation are kept secret, and their decisions are absolutely final.

We suspect the MRC is modeled after the 13th century Vatican without the Inquisition.

In an Inside Radio interview MRC CEO George Ivie left his Cone of Silence long enough to comment on Voltair noting:

In general, changes need to be improvements in encoding or code-capture efficacy. We are very unlikely to approve degradations in these processes.

To which we can only add WTF???

The PPM codes are simply audio tones embedded in a radio station’s audio. Every station has an audio chain that includes processing. Every station.

And those audio chains vary in complexity and sophistication.

Radio stations have been trying to process their audio to “game” PPM since day one, mostly unsuccessfully. If Mr. Ivie is concerned about degradation, the MRC should grant accreditation to audio chains and Nielsen should authorize every encoder installation.

25-Seven isn’t the first to try to fix an imperfect encoding/decoding process. They just appear to have figured it out better than any before them.

For Nielsen and now the MRC to make thinly veiled threats suggesting that Voltair may potentially be somehow degrading the process is hypocritical silliness.

If anything, the processor appears to be making PPM encoding more robust. It does nothing more than help stations get credit for listening that they might have otherwise lost.

We suspect that the PPM accreditation process did not test encoding/decoding robustness with each of the dozens of formats, and the multitude of environments in which people listen to the radio, let alone with the hundreds of processors and thousands of processing chains in use today.

To single out Voltair for attention is the wrong thing on which Mr. Ivie should be focused. If he really is concerned about PPM code-capture efficacy, he should reopen the accreditation process of PPM.

He should ask Nielsen how it is that hundreds of radio stations that install Voltair get better numbers. What does that say about the intrinsic robustness of PPM?

 

At the NAB: Processing for PPM

Radio has not done enough to make sure PPM meters properly register station listening. That was the message of Cornelius Gould speaking to a packed meeting room at the NAB’s Sunday Radio Technology Forum.

The Telos Alliance Omnia Team Leader shared test results illustrating how gaps in PPM station encoding levels can potentially cost stations quarter-hours of listening.

One potential problem is programming material with weak mid-range content. Gould singled out older Hip-Hop played by Urban ACs as an example. High ambient interference such as highway noise can also have a negative impact on PPM decoding. Improper processing is a third source of lost quarter-hours.

The charts at the left shown during the talk illustrate the problem. The charts show encoding strength as a time line. Green bars indicate the strongest encoding, red bars indicate the weakest encoding. (Sorry for the poor quality. This is a shot taken of the projector screen.)

The upper timeline is without PPM watermark processing. The lower timeline shows encoding strength after running the audio through a Voltair processor.

The Voltair was able to boost the lowest encoding levels, potentially filling in decoding gaps and adding quarter-hour credits for the station.

Gould began his talk by reading a statement by Nielsen expressing guarded interest in learning more about what Voltair does.

We’re pleased to see that The Telos Alliance has developed a processor to fix flaws in Nielsen’s PPM encoders. We're also pleased that Nielsen is curious about the technology.The presentation makes it clear that PPM encoders need a serious upgrade.

The presentation was very persuasive for this viewer (and many others in the room if the enthusiastic applause given Gould is any indication).  

PPM is not capturing all formats equally well. It is challenged by high ambient noise. Radio stations are losing quarter-hours and rating points through no fault of their own. And it is potentially costing radio a lot of money.

We’ll have more to add after a second Voltair presentation later in the week.

Nielsen PPM Poo Hits the Fan

Voltair is a processor that compensates for weak PPM encoding. By enhancing encoding it increases the likelihood that meters will correctly identify the radio station playing.

And preliminary evidence is promising.

With rumors swirling about the device’s ability to boost ratings, Nielsen has been forced to respond to the rumors.

In a confidential letter to clients Nielsen declared:

Nielsen is in the process of evaluating and testing the Voltair product, and we have engaged the MRC to provide validation of the testing results....

As we complete our thorough assessment, we will provide additional updates. To ensure a transparent measurement environment, Nielsen does not recommend that clients use Voltair until the testing and validation is complete.

That is rich. That is precious.

PPM is the most opaque audience measurement method ever conceived. It is a black box from start to finish. It is impossible for broadcasters to independently validate its estimates at any point in the process.

Harker Research has made repeated requests for Arbitron and now Nielsen to reveal test data on issues like reliability of decoding.

The company has stonewalled all our requests.

Even worse, Nielsen continues to mis-characterize the purpose and findings of the single independent study that clearly showed that PPM meters could not always reliably identify stations played at reasonable levels in realistic listening settings.

So the company that refuses all attempts to independently vett PPM wants broadcasters to wait until they have passed judgement on Voltair.

Keep in mind that Voltair only fills in the listening gaps that an imperfect encoding/decoding process misses. You’re not getting bonus quarter-hours, you’re getting more of the quarter-hours you’ve earned.

Voltair is the first device expressly designed to compensate for one of PPM’s problems, the fact that it doesn’t pick up all the listening it is exposed to.

If Nielsen blesses Voltair, it will essentially be acknowledging the obvious fact that PPM isn’t perfect, it doesn’t capture all the listening it is exposed to.

It also acknowledges that Voltair contains technology that PPM encoders should have included in the first place.

So we can’t wait to see what form the"additional updates" take.

Radio Insights has devoted the last decade to educating radio broadcasters about Arbitron’s PPM.

We’ve read the white papers, attended the Arbitron Fly-Ins, and talked to both supporters and skeptics to better understand the inner workings of PPM.

We came to the conclusion that radio’s leaders dropped the ball when they rushed to embrace PPM.

As we wrote in 2009:

Radio has not been served by blind acceptance of Arbitron's PPM. Arbitron's rush to monetize PPM combined with radio's unquestioning naivete regarding PPM has stifled the debate on this and many other PPM issues. It is never too late to start asking the important questions.

If the initial indication that Voltair can boost ratings of some stations by 20% and more holds, PPM will have potentially cost radio billions of dollars in lost revenue.

We’ll have more to say about Voltair during the NAB convention.

Note: In case you’re wondering we have no business relationship or financial interest with The Telos Alliance, 25-Seven, or anyone else who may potentially benefit from these comments.

Our only goal is to help radio understand PPM.

Can PPM Kill Formats?

Can a format have lots of listeners but low ratings?

Yes, if we’re talking about PPM ratings.

Ratings are no longer just a measure of how many people listen to a radio station.

PPM’s technology creates winners and losers based also on the sound properties of the content, the level at which a format is listened, and the ambient noise surrounding the panelist.

Accurate PPM ratings require that the meters reliably detect and identify radio stations over time. And as it turns out, the process is not 100% reliable.

When PPM launched, Arbitron claimed that if a listener could hear the radio, the meter would pick up the station and properly credit it. But now we know that isn’t completely true.

Independent research has shown that ambient noise can mask the encoded signal so that no listening is recorded. Research has also shown that a radio station played in the background might not be loud enough for the meter to pick up the encoded signal.

And research has shown that a radio station with dynamic programming that includes occasional periods of silence or low level audio (think Classical or Talk radio) might miss some of the credit it deserves as the meter struggles to identify the station.

All this may be news to you, but it has been documented here at Radio Insights for years. You can catch up by reading earlier posts. Start here, hear, and here.

To understand how PPM can kill formats, we have to go back to the very beginnings of Arbitron’s efforts to sell PPM to broadcasters.

Early in the development of PPM there were concerns that the analog encoding tones would be audible. Arbitron’s solution was to inject the encoding data at a much lower level than a station’s audio, and to maintain the level difference regardless of the level of a station’s audio.

If a station’s audio level increases, the level of encoding tones increases as well. More significantly, if the station’s loudness drops, the encoding level drops as well.

If a station goes quiet for a moment, encoding stops.

And if there’s no audio around 1 kHz to 3 kHz (the frequency range used by PPM) to mask the encoding, encoding stops.

Arbitron’s assurances that listeners wouldn’t hear the encoding seemed to satisfy US broadcasters.

The problem was that the industry never demanded that Arbitron prove that the meters would properly credit stations at the encoding levels the company settled on.

Now, a decade into PPM we know that PPM is costing radio stations quarter-hours. And the number of quarter-hours lost varies by format.

Remember the death of Smooth Jazz at the hands of PPM? Smooth Jazz was the first format to suffer death by PPM.

One by one, Smooth Jazz stations disappeared as markets switched to PPM. Stations that had been pulling respectable numbers in the diaries virtually disappeared in PPM.

Most Smooth Jazz eulogies pointed to PPM’s role, but blamed the format, not flaws in PPM technology as the root problem. The assumption was that PPM was accurate and that the format really didn’t have as many listeners as it thought.

It didn’t occur to anyone that PPM might not pick up a format like Smooth Jazz played in the background.

New/Talk is another format that took a hit when PPM replaced the diaries.

Spoken word formats are filled with pauses and moments of dead air. As far as PPM is concerned, being silent is no different from being off the air.

It is also a format with deep voices and often not a lot of content within the requisite 1-3 kHz range. With infrequent masking content, there’s little chance that a meter will accurately log listening to News/Talk.

Now after a decade of willful ignorance of these weaknesses within PPM, broadcasters are discovering that they can increase their ratings by processes the encoding signal to increase the chance a meter will properly capture the listening.

A company has been quietly testing a device that optimizes the encoding process. Some test stations are reportedly seeing 15-20% rating gains.

This in line with estimates made in a 2004 research study that suggested that PPM might be missing upwards of 20% of exposed listening.

Maybe if this device had been around as PPM rolled out, Smooth Jazz would still be around.

Maybe radio would look a lot different today.