With a full quarter of data now available under Nielsen’s new three-minute listening threshold, radio broadcasters have hard evidence to support a long-held belief: people listen to radio more often – and with more frequency – than previously captured.
During the fifth installment of the RAB’s Better Together webinar series led RAB President Mike Hulvey, Nielsen Audio Managing Director Rich Tunkel and VP of Audience Insights John Miller unveiled the latest data under the three-minute rule, which took effect in January across all PPM markets.
With radio being in the “second inning” of the change, the new data provides an opportunity to lead a broader conversation about the growing value of radio.
According to Miller, the first quarter of 2025 saw an average 15% increase in Average Quarter-Hour audience levels compared to Q4 2024, which aligns with early expectations. He cautioned that while reach and frequency metrics are up, this doesn’t translate to more free inventory or reduced spot loads.
Tunkel reinforced this point: “Don’t be lured into the false expectation that, ‘Oh, I can buy fewer spots and get the same results because the ratings are showing me that I can get 15% higher impressions.’ That audience was always there. What we’re doing is we’re reporting it now for the first time.”
One of the most anticipated data packets was Nielsen’s deep dive into how the ratings shift has changed actual schedule performance. Based on an analysis of hundreds of schedules across all 48 PPM markets, Nielsen found that Gross Rating Points increased by an average of 19 percent, impressions rose by 15 percent, reach grew by approximately 7 percent, and frequency saw a more modest rise of about 8 percent depending on the intensity of the schedule.
Lighter schedules showed the most reach gain, while heavier schedules primarily boosted frequency. “You’re not getting a heavy schedule for medium schedule investments,” Miller emphasized. “The gains are real and they’re within those columns, but they don’t start to overlap with each other.”
The lift wasn’t uniform across formats or geographies. Phoenix led the nation with a 28% rise in AQH between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Sacramento followed closely behind with increases of 24%, 23%, and 23%, respectively. While most top-tier markets saw double-digit increases, some markets such as Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Nashville reported more modest growth in the single digits.
“You generally can see Western markets showing the larger increases, which was consistent with our test data,” said Tunkel.
Some formats like Urban, Spanish-language, and AC, saw double-digit increases. Sports was an outlier, posting a decline compared to Q4, which is typically a peak season for the format due to NFL and college football.
Lastly, Tunkel stressed that advertisers using Media Mix Modeling will now see more accurate attribution for radio. “What we’re doing is giving radio credit for listening that was happening but not being counted,” he said. “That’s going to feed their models with higher impressions levels and help radio take credit where it couldn’t before.”
The entire webinar is available on-demand via the RAB.
We have begged for this change for decades. Can we get a refund?
Some in the radio industry accuse digital companies of fraud and misleading their advertisers.
This 3 minute rule is tantamount to fraud. Now, if a listener is tuned to just 3 minutes in a quarter hour, the station gets credit for the full quarter hour of listening??! Wow. So we’ve lowered the threshold.
The elephant in the room is still 12, 15, sometimes more commercials, in one break.
The advertisers in the middle of those long breaks are getting shafted.. No one in their right mind listens to 12, 15 commercials in a row. Television has nowhere near that many commercials in one break.
Good thing we’ve lowered the threshold to only 3 minutes of listening, to count for a 1/4 hour of listening.
Total deception.
And these morons had NO CLUE how to monetize it.
15% In Q1
STUPID- if you think that’s going to save radio lack of advertising dollars you are so wrong. You need listeners and you need people that like the radio, but nobody does anymore so you may as well just turn off the stations and go sell them off to suckers!!!