Saga CEO Ed Christian, who is not a paying customer of Nielsen, spent about 15 minutes on his Q3 earnings call voicing his displeasure with the ratings firm’s upcoming Customer First strategy. In 2021 Nielsen will no longer list non-subscribers in the summary level data it sends to ad agencies.
Christian said that what Nielsen is doing is “essentially increasing the rates by 50% or more to the individual agencies that subscribe to just the summary data.” It’s generally known that agencies only make up about 10% of Nielsen’s audio revenue. If agencies upgrade to the respondent level data service they will see all the stations, including non-subscribers.
Nielsen says its goal is to take care of its paying customers, and, it’s also a question of economic sustainability. Nielsen has had to lay off 3,500 people and stop measuring 9 markets due to the pandemic.
Christian says the new Nielsen policy blames the non-paying radio stations and says that’s unfair. “We have enough relationship issues with Nielsen without pointing a finger and saying, bad dog, bad dog. And that’s what’s happening on this.”
Christian says all he wants is honesty. “I want to have a level-playing field for everybody if you’re going to show radio stations and you’re going to measure correctly and properly. And to leave out, in some cases 40% of the radio market, because they don’t subscribe to your service, that’s punitive, and that just almost mean spirited in some respects.”
Nielsen’s Brad Kelly told us last week that in the PPM markets only 21 out of 960 stations will be impacted from the top 20 rated stations in each of those 48 markets. In diary markets (51-100) about 9% of the stations will be impacted.
Christian says just because stations use the ratings does not make them any better than those who don’t. “You’re not. Like us, we have the relationships with our clients, one-on-one. They know what we can do, in the community. And this is something that Nielsen has a little problem understanding is that, radio stations can be successful through one-on-one client relationships, because they can see and feel and touch, and believe what happens in the community.”
So is Nielsen exempting stations owned by women and minorities because Nielsen executives are prejudiced and believe they are all poor and can’t afford it? Or because Nielsen executives are bigots who think women and minorities are all too stupid to know how to subscribe?
It must be one or the other, or a combination of both, because there is no legitimate reason for the exemptions. None.
If Nielsen thinks most women-owned and minority-owned stations can’t afford to subscribe, so be it. But such an exemption should be based on the same financial criteria for all stations regardless of who owns them.
Ed is on point. Agency’s on the local market side are confused enough.
Ed’s points are on target. What Neilson has created now is a survey of paying customers, not a market survey. This is a huge disservice to buyers and advertisers. An out of the market agency is getting “doctored” information on the state of the market. This reminds me of those “Best of Lists” that many local magazines put out. You can be the “Best” eye doctor in town….if you buy a full page ad in the issue! More stations just need to drop them.
Sorry Capitalism is so troublesome.
I do not disagree with that; in a capitalistic business market, you should pay for the value of a product or service.
Having said that, Nielsen should seek to get past this controversy by coming up with a more equitable business model that more effectively serves the greatest number of clients. That would include modernizing its data collection methodology in what are now the smaller diary markets. Even Nielsen should be professionally dissatisfied with the sometimes whiplash-inducing sampling and ratings swings in smaller markets.
Much work needs to be done by Nielsen.
To underscore both Ed’s remarks and the previous comment, a fellow “sellmate” and I work for one of Ed’s clusters. Just between the two of us, we have 95 years experience in the market. In a few cases, we representing the stations to a third generation of owner-managers. If we do have to deal with an agency, who do you suppose can provide them with concrete information about our market? Feet on the street or numbers on a printout?
Outside of the top 100 markets, the ratings are of little value to most stations. Or, to put it a bit differently, they aren’t worth what Nielsen charges. Regional/national business has been shrinking the last several years–the agencies are still placing buys, but the rates are not there.
Let’s get real, apart from the “my tower is taller than yours” aspect of market ranking, Nielsen is really only of value to the agencies. As Ed Christian notes, most of our business in smaller markets depends on the relationships we have built up with our local advertisers.
In 1975, my business partner, then in his twenties, was selling for another station in our market. His GM-15 years older than him–called him in & assigned him the account with a local jeweler. The founder of that business has just retired, his 25 year old son was taking over the business. Well, my business partner was at that same store yesterday, getting an order from the widow who now owns the store.
Same story, different market. It’s all about relationships which the ratings giants have not cultivated with smaller markets like ours. Here’s a hint. If no operator is willing to buy the service then it must be overpriced. Our market has been embargoed for years. And the survey field has never matched the population distribution of the area. A patently defective methodology.