The concept
How did the inventors of the steam engine explain its benefits to people who were used to the horse-drawn carriage? Classify the strength of the engine in horsepower!
The radio industry, especially in the digital age, requires established and reliable metrics to support the planning, buying and selling of inventory. At egta’s recent Radio Advertising Innovations Meeting, Triton Digital showcased Webcast Metrics, the industry standard for online audio audience measurement. Webcast Metrics provides buyers with credible third-party metrics using an industry standard that is relied upon by advertising agencies, sales houses and buyers of all sizes. The comparable data provided by Webcast Metrics facilitates both digital and terrestrial media buying, contributing to the growth of the online audio marketplace and helping marketers better understand the changing audio landscape and radio’s strong position within it.
How does it work?
Triton Digital’s Webcast Metrics is a census-based measurement and metrics solution. No samples, surveys or panels are utilised. Census-based data are the real numbers, where one equals one. Streams are measured in real-time, allowing the sales house to get its data wherever and whenever needed. It gives real-time feedback on what the audience is reacting to and what it is not. This allows effective asset management (from staffing to inventory). The data is collected via player-embedded listener tracking codes and streaming server log files, and audience reports are delivered to the publishers via a web-based console.
Like broadcast radio, Webcast Metrics uses the traditional audio metric Average Quarter Hour (AQH) as part of its calculations. The difference, however, is how broadcast and online audio calculate AQH. In broadcast radio, AQH is an audience estimate generated by processing listening data from surveys and panels. Webcast Metrics AQH is calculated as the average number of listeners, listening for at least five minutes, at any point within a specified time period. With online audio, there are no surveys, panels, or estimates. The resulting calculation provides an apples-to-apples comparative metric that allows media agencies and their advertiser clients compare the value of impressions within multi-platform media plans.
Why does it matter to egta members?
Whilst terrestrial radio occupies the lion’s share of radio sales house revenues and dominates the audio marketplace, online audio is a rapidly growing sector.
Broadcasters are extending their reach and relevance to listeners and leveraging the targeting capabilities of online audio advertising by launching brand extensions, developing hybrid solutions and creating their own audio platforms. The online audio marketplace is becoming highly competitive, with established on-demand and personalised players like Spotify, Rdio, Deezer, Aupeo and - in the US - Pandora being joined in 2013 by iTunes Radio and Google Music All Access.
Further growth of this market will be driven by educating the industry, standardising the audio marketplace and packaging sales houses offers with relevant metrics to ensure that radio is able to leverage the reach of streaming.
Triton Digital’s Webcast Metrics is an effective tool to support an emerging planning, buying and selling ecosystem assembled around metrics that are reliable and understood by both traditional radio and digital buyers alike. In the absence of a truly hybrid measurement and reporting methodology to combine terrestrial radio and online audio, Webcast Metrics brings clarity and comparability to the market. |
