As those in the radio industry are now aware, Nielsen announced and has now implemented a change to the way it calculates its PPM radio ratings, by shifting the qualifying time from five minutes in a quarter-hour down to three.
In a recent article on Barrett Media, Jon Miller, the Vice President of Audience Insights at Nielsen, explained how the decision to pick three minutes was not an arbitrary one, but rather one that was decided upon after stumbling upon this data point: “Of all of the uncredited occasions that we see in the PPM markets, the median length is three minutes,” Miller shared. “So that was like a blinking red light of like, ‘You know what? Maybe that makes sense to go to that number’, right? This gets us, again, more in line with current digital currencies.”
This is a step in the right direction. We know that attention spans have diminished, people spend less time with their preferred content than ever before and bounce around between an infinite amount of audio options.
Here’s the problem: It doesn’t get Nielsen — and the radio industry as a result — anywhere close to being in line with current digital currencies.
Sure, it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s miles away from how major digital outlets are calculating their metrics. This is nothing to celebrate, but rather highlight the snail’s pace at which metrics are progressing in radio.
According to available information, YouTube counts a view of a video at 30 seconds, and it doesn’t even need to be a consecutive 30 seconds. Facebook and Instagram (Meta) count a video view if you watch it for three seconds. On X, that number is two seconds. TikTok is even more absurd. On TikTok, a view is counted as soon as a video starts playing, meaning even if a user scrolls past immediately, it still registers as a view; essentially, you only need to watch for a fraction of a second for a view to count.
Meantime, for audio-only platforms like podcasts, it’s more about downloads that are tracked, which means a user doesn’t even need to technically listen for it to count as a listen.
So for radio, we’re playing a game that is totally unfair when compared to any of the digital platforms that are competing for the attention of viewers and listeners. To use a sports analogy, digital outlets are left-handed hitters who get to play all their games in Yankee Stadium with a short right field porch, while radio is playing in Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, considered the hardest place to hit home runs in Major League Baseball. Oh, and radio can only have one hand on the bat, while blindfolded.
Nielsen’s decision to move to three minutes was more about missed opportunities on the platform of radio, rather than looking at it through the lens of where the rest of the media world is, and what is being presented to advertisers as “views” and “listens” around the industry.
Some may see this as complaining, and it may be to a degree, but for an industry that has shot itself in the foot far too many times — in different ways for far too long — we should not celebrate when we happen to fire and just knick off a piece of our baby toe, rather than take off the big toe.
Let’s get this Nielsen number down even further. And do it ASAP.
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Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the morning show host and program director for KCMO in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. Pete was also the sports and news director for Omni Media Group at K-1O1/Z-92 in Woodward, Oklahoma. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on Twitter @PeteMundo.
