Harker Blogs, 'Nielsen To Radio: PPM Is Perfect. Now We’ll Fix It.'

Stll Waiting On Nielsen Response

On their latest "Radio InSights" blog, HARKER RESEARCH turns up the heat on NIELSEN, writing, "totalitarian regimes use torturous language when admitting problems and failures. They hope that by couching confessions within reassurances they can hide the truth in plain sight. We were reminded of this as we listened to the recent NIELSEN PPM Webinar."

They continue, "officially the presentation was exclusively for NIELSEN AUDIO clients and invited guests, namely the NAB, RAB, and MRC, but we suspect we weren’t the only gate crasher at this long anticipated extravaganza. We’ve held off offering a detailed critique of what NIELSEN had to say because NIELSEN's MATT O’GRADY made assurances during the presentation that it would be made available to all clients. We’re still waiting. How long does it take to post a ten page presentation?"

"Maybe somebody within NIELSEN decided there was too much honesty," quipped HARKER. "Maybe the implications of the promises and assurances were a little too transparent. Whatever the reason for the delay, we’re going to go ahead and examine the presentation, its claims and promises and translate all 4,400 words into plain English. Here’s the bottom line:

• NIELSEN claims PPM works like it is supposed to, but it is going to make significant changes to the encoding process to fix the problems that NIELSEN claims do not exist.
• NIELSEN also claims that extensive testing has shown that VOLTAIR doesn’t really increase ratings, but if it does, it might do so by creating spurious codes while degrading the listening experience for panelists.
• (If you’re one of the hundreds of radio stations successfully using VOLTAIR all this may be contrary to your own experience, but NIELSEN says they’ve proved it.)

Read the full post here.

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