Friday March 25th, 2016
It’s been awhile since the industry has heard much about Voltair, the Watermark Monitor and Processor built by 25-Seven Systems that touched off a ton of controversy over the accuracy of Nielsen’s PPM electronic ratings system.
In response, last fall Nielsen introduced enhanced CBET (eCBET) to reduce alleged encoding issues with the PPM system that were brought to light when broadcasters began experimenting with Voltair units.
So problem solved, right?
Maybe not, as a new release from The Telos Alliance reports that after several months of research, broadcasters are finding Voltair still provides a significant ratings advantage, even with enhance CBET. Two recent examples they cite include :
- An FM Talk and Music station in a Top 10 market found that the quarter-hours with Voltair (set to 12) were 7.8% higher than the quarter-hours without Voltair.
- An AM News/Talk station in a top-25 market experienced a 10.3% increase in quarter-hours with Voltair (set to 12) over the quarter-hours without Voltair.
The Telos Alliance notes that the proof comes from “toggle-testing” — a function built into every unit that allows a station to vary Voltair’s enhancement level for each quarter hour.
You can then track the ratings results for the quarter-hours, both with and without Voltair enhancement, to compare results.
