Bear Stearns Holds Urban Radio In PPM World Conference

Urban Radio In The PPM World

BEAR STEARNS held a conference call regarding "Urban Radio in the PPM World" TODAY (11/16) that was designed to discuss EMMIS COMMUNICATIONS' take on "the strengths of Urban radio as viewed through the lens of the PPM." Hosted by Radio & TV Analyst VICTOR MILLER, the call featured EMMIS COO RICK CUMMINGS and ROI MEDIA SOLUTIONS Pres. MARK SHANNON O'NEILL.

O'NEILL's presentation highlights included:

* Urban Radio is the only way to effectively and efficiently reach the Black consumer
* The Black audience is extremely loyal to Urban radio
* Employment and income drive AQH radtigs for Urban radio in the PPM world
* The qualitative data shows the importance of the Black consumer to almost every major business catagory and it shows a practical solution for reaching them
* ARBITRON's PPM methodology gives us better insight into how to target and reach essential consumer segment.

In a "myth vs. reality" discussion, O'NEILL said it's a "myth that listening changed when PPM was introduced." Reality is "listening didn't change -- the measurement used to estimate listening changed. PPM measures exposure vs. the diary which measured recall." 

Much of the talk then centered on how ad agencies will deal with the initial changes when buying radio. ARBITRON has released it's "70 = 100" press release, and this was discussed. O'NEILL pointed out that TV went through the same conversion, and felt radio buyers would understand the change in numbers. The analogy of a car travelling at 75mph vs. 120 kilometers per hour (the same speed) was used. 

O'NEILL was high on radio's story in a PPM world by saying, "The data shows radio stations are a unique brand. That's true of both general market stations and Urban stations. Advertisers need to know this story. To reach a station's core market, incidental listening on another station isn't going to work, you'll need to use that station."

CUMMINGS summed things up saying, "The most important thing to remember is that raking doesn't mean what it didn in the diary world. It's so compressed in PPM. But this data proves what we've known for 25 years, that you can't reach the Urban or Hispanic audience on general market radio stations."

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