New PPM and Fund Drive Study in the Works

DEI, NPR, and John Sutton & Associates (JSA) are conducting a study in PPM markets of audience response to fund drives.

This is the first comprehensive study on listening patterns before, during, and after fund drives. JSA conducted the first PPM and Fund Drive analysis along with Paragon Media Strategies in December 1997. That study was limited to just a few stations and analyzed top-line audience response only.

The new study also aims to establish on-air fundraising benchmarks for PPM stations. These benchmarks will help stations you evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of their fund drives.

Stations subscribing to PPM data in Fall 2009 are being asked to participate. We plan to release our reports in two parts later this Spring.

Part One will study listening patterns and overall fund drive results. The objective is to quantify audience loss (if any) around fund drives, determine how quickly listening levels recover, find out if certain demographics or dayparts are affected more than others, and if there is a relationship between overall fund drive results and audience gain or loss during fund drives.

Part Two analyzes contributions and dollars received by dayparts and hours during the fund drive. The results are analyzed against the actual listening in those dayparts and hours. This information will be used to calculate each station's efficiency at turning listening into contributions. National benchmarks will be established and stations will be able to analyze their results against the national benchmarks. This is very practical research that will help stations develop better strategies and tactics for getting more listeners to give more quickly.

DEI is contacting potential participants about the study. Please forward any questions to John Sutton, john@radiosutton.com or Jay Clayton, jayclayton@comcast.net.

PPM and Public Radio Pledge Drives

Earlier today, John Sutton & Associates and Paragon Media Strategies presented the first study on public radio pledge drives using Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPM) data. The presentation was organized by DEI and presented with the help of the Radio Research Consortium. We'll provide a link to the presentation as soon at it is on-line.

It's early in the PPM game. We expect that some of what we're learning now will change or evolve as we analyze more pledge drives in more markets. This study analyzed Fall pledge drives in Houston, Philadelphia, and New York. Here are some of the highlights:

- AQH (Average Quarter-Hour) audiences during the drive went down as much as 36% compared to the three weeks leading up to the drive. AQH dropped because Daily Cume and Daily time spent listening dropped. Weekly Cume was affected at some stations but not others.

- AQH went up 3.7% during the pledge drive at KUHF in Houston. This was different from audience response to KUHF's Spring 2007 drive, when AQH went down 16%. KUHF made many strategic changes between Spring and Fall, including moving pledge drive producing responsibilities from the Development department to the Programming department. It is too soon to determine cause and effect, if that can even be done, but we plan to research this impressive result further.

- Audience recovery after pledge drives was quick. AQH audiences returned to pre-drive levels or higher at most of the stations almost immediately after the drives ended.

There's much more in the presentation. And we'll post additional findings and insights on the blog.

Questions? Feel free to write me, john@radiosutton.com

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Here's the link to slides from our first study on PPM and Public Radio Ratings. It's at paragonmediastrategies.com

First Look: Public Radio in PPM

Paragon Media Strategies’ Mike Henry and I presented the first look at public radio audiences in the PPM measurement system at Arbitron’s consultant fly-in on December 13th.

Among the insights gained from the study:

1. Public radio and commercial radio news stations don’t compete as much as one might think.

2. PPM shows that audience flow for public radio isn’t very different from the results reported in the diaries. Even though the Cume, TSL, and AQHs are different, listener behavior is very similar.

PPM is beginning to show how public radio stations can better understand audience response to pledge drives – from disruption to recovery time. More PPM insights about pledge drives will be reported in January.

You can download the presentation at the Paragon Media Strategies web site by clicking here.

Our thanks to Paragon Media Strategies for partnering with JSA on this project and to Arbitron for the opportunity to work on this study.