Nielsen will increase the size of its Portable People Meter panel. It said the move will help improve accuracy and quality of audience measurements.
Nielsen has already been in industry news headlines this month for several reasons. It just acquired video, music and sports digital data business Gracenote for more than half a billion dollars from Tribune. Separately, a recent technical problem affecting some PPM meters caused the Media Rating Council to withhold its accreditation from the December 2016 Nielsen Audio PPM service reports.
In Wednesday’s announcement, the company said starting in mid-2017 it will increase the panel in 48 PPM markets, expanding the effective sample size by 10% across all markets and demographics.
“Nielsen’s enhanced PPM panel will have more than 80,000 installed meters,” it stated. “This means that on an average day over 65,000 panelists will contribute to the ratings. The increase represents more than 6,000 additional panelists on a daily basis across the aggregate of PPM markets. The sample increase will be distributed proportionally across all demographics.”
It quoted Managing Director Brad Kelly saying that a bigger sample size “is the number one priority for our clients.” He described the decision as “doubling down on its commitment to the radio industry.”
Nielsen also said the Gracenote deal will play a role in radio. “Nielsen will be exploring ways to leverage Gracenote’s vast footprint in over 70 million car infotainment systems as well as their expertise as the industry standard for automatic content recognition (ACR) to help expand our measurement of in-car audio and in-car digital listening.”
