Barbs Traded in E-Ratings Battle

The Media Audit/Ipsos and Arbitron, competing for the industry’s business in electronic radio ratings, exchanged another round of press releases Friday.
According to Media Audit, “A recent radio study shows 35% to 40% of participants in the study are more likely to routinely carry a cell phone than a pager device to measure radio audiences.” The company’s Bob Jordan stated, “This may explain why a pager-like device is showing overall radio listening lower than previous surveys. While edit rules can help boost listening, the reality is that if people aren’t carrying the monitoring device, radio listening isn’t being recorded.”
The Media Audit conclusion was based on the survey question, “Now let’s suppose that you did agree to participate in the study and you have just left home when you discover that you have forgotten to bring the monitor with you. If the monitor was your (cell phone/pager) and you were a few minutes from home, would you go back home to get it?”
Jordan says the study shows nearly 85% of 18-34-year-old adults would likely go back and pick up their cell phone monitor among a demographic group that is traditionally less likely to participate in surveys. By comparison, he said, less than two-thirds said that they would go back home to pick up their pager-like device if they forgot it.
Aribron’s Thom Mocarsky fired back, as he did the day before in reply to a Media Audit release.
“Okay…one more time. People carry the Arbitron PPM 14 to 15 hours a day. Even Men 18-to-34 years old,” he wrote. He summarized Arbitron statistics in Houston to back the assertion and stated, “These real compliance results are not indicative of many meters being ‘left behind.'”
He said the Media Audit survey asks what people hypothetically might do and said its proposed system “has no way of tracking when and for how long people will carry their cell phones.” The PPM has a motion sensor for that purpose.
An earlier study, Mocarsky says, shows that cell users will require a lot of retraining if the cell phone is to be used as a media measurement device.