By Mark Ramsey
August 17, 2016
So last week I penned a strong piece suggesting that the radio industry drop PPM.
The argument was stimulated by the discovery that Nielsen households can contain up to 16 meters. For me, this was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
The piece sparked a firestorm and almost a thousand Facebook shares, not because my points were so salient (although I hope they were) but because there does not seem to exist a single PPM subscriber who considers themselves satisfied customers. Nielsen is evidently in the business of optimizing unhappiness.
Nice work if you can get it.
You can read my original post for yourself. Nielsen responded in typical corporate fashion with this “official” response:
We strongly believe in and stand behind our portable people meter (PPM) technology. Our 70,000+ PPM panel is representative of the marketplace. While the tenure of individual Nielsen PPM panelists vary by demographics, on average, a person is part of the panel for 11 months. While less than half a percent of our in-tab persons come from households with 10 or more residents, our average household panel size for people 6 years and older is 2.5 persons per home for all PPM markets. This is in line with the household universe estimate of 2.4 persons per home. Nielsen’s PPM technology will continue to deliver currency grade metrics that the radio and advertising industries depend on to transact with confidence.
This is called “how to lie with statistics.” So let’s do some math.
Read More HERE
