Harker: Look What Traditional Nielsen Measurement Misses

Asks What's Nielsen Missing?

In an installment earlier this month (NET NEWS 11/6) of The Radio Insights blog, HARKER RESEARCH spotlighted the problem NIELSEN has in picking up radio station digital streams. The bottom line is that accurately monitoring stream usage will be key to radio's future success.

HARKER wrote, "The fundamental problem is that the digital stream of a broadcast contains much less masking content than the same material broadcast over the air. Less masking content means fewer opportunities to encode, and a greater chance that station listening credit will be lost."

The latest posting adds to that, noting, "We really don't know total radio listening because of these unmeasured digital alternatives to analog radio. The majority of listening is still by way of analog radio. However, other alternatives are growing. Office workers listen to streams on their computers. Others listen on their mobile devices. Consequently, a growing proportion of local radio is not being measured."

Read the full post here.

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