Nielsen in the Radio Ratings Business?

Cumulus Media Inc. and The Nielsen Company announced that starting in 2009 Nielsen will provide audience measurement and radio ratings in 50 small- and mid-sized US markets. The companies also announced that Clear Channel Radio will subscribe to the syndicated service in 17 of the markets in which the service will be offered. This concludes a process that commenced with Cumulus’ “request for proposal” and which evolved into an open search for the best in radio research.

“We initiated the RFP to improve the quality and value of radio ratings,” notes Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey. “That opened up a transparent process which gave us the option to talk to the best research practitioners in the world. We couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome. Nielsen is the gold standard for television advertisers who make nearly $80 billion worth of decisions in the U.S. based on Nielsen data. This is a great development for Radio.”

“Clear Channel Radio is delighted to have the choice to move to an improved audience measurement approach in these important markets and applauds Nielsen for bringing their exemplary business practices to radio,” said John Hogan, President and CEO of Clear Channel Radio. “This gives radio ratings greater accuracy, stronger accountability, and full transparency, and shows the true power of radio to reach the most coveted consumers.”

The Nielsen Company has more than six decades of experience measuring radio around the world. The service, which begins in Q3 2009, will use a proven and easy to use/easy to edit ‘sticker diary’ that has improved the quality of radio measurement data around the world.

In another major improvement from the status quo, Nielsen will use address-based sampling (ABS) to recruit sample households. Nielsen pioneered the use of ABS, which uses randomly selected addresses rather than telephone numbers, in its domestic television measurement in order to reach the 34% of U.S. households that are not covered by current sampling methods, including cell-phone only and many unlisted landline phone households.

Other solution features include:

* Large samples to reduce relative error and bounce.
* A significant investment in oversampling and differentiated incentives to improve response rates and representativeness among hard-to-reach demographics.
* An “e-diary” option for 2010 that will appeal, in particular, to younger demographics that are more comfortable participating online.
* Robust, single-source qualitative measurement of lifestyle, consumer behavior, and purchase intent.
* Nielsen’s web-based Radio Advisor software platform, which will include responsible limits on the granularity of analysis and relative errors that can be used in proposals and analyses.

John Dickey, Cumulus COO, added: “We talked to a number of great companies, but Nielsen was the clear leader in terms of their focus on quality and customer success. We also see a very important long-term benefit in this engagement. Nielsen is committed to, and uniquely capable of, delivering a multi-media measurement solution – what they call their Anytime, Anywhere Media Measurement (A2/M2) initiative, which has significant appeal to consumer marketers. As a part of this integrated measurement solution, we believe that we can better serve the advertising communities and strongly position radio and its digital extensions for the future.”

“Cumulus and Clear Channel have made it clear to us that they want to challenge the status quo in these markets by seeking new ways of measuring this important medium,” said Susan D. Whiting, Vice Chairperson and Executive Vice President of the Nielsen Company. “Nielsen agreed to develop this service only after we became convinced there was a market need we could fill by calling upon our broad experience in media measurement.”