Nielsen Audio has been discussing a major change to the formula for quarter-hour credits for stations in PPM markets. In a webinar with clients last week, the ratings company announced that they are working toward changing the required time listening from five minutes to three minutes to gain AQH credit.
“For the past 100 years (seriously), the hard and fast rule required five minutes of listening (not contiguous) to a radio station in order to receive a quarter-hour credit,” consultant Fred Jacobs, who sat in on the webinar wrote in a blog post. “But in this age of virtually infinite choice, deteriorating attention spans, and short songs that are three minutes in duration or less, radio stations have gotten screwed out of quarter-hours racking up on their side of the ledger.”
During the session, Nielsen explained that nearly half of radio listening occasions came up short of quarter-hour credit because the PPM holder listened for less than five minutes.
Nielsen said changing the required time of listening to three minutes would generate an average AQH increase of a whopping 26% (6+).
There is no set time frame for implementing the new three-minute standard, as Nielsen continues to work through the data and continues its discussion with client stations.
Commentaires