Bitching about Nielsen Audio is easy. Improving upon it isn’t. This week, let’s consider the value issue.
Let’s step back and decide whether Nielsen Audio, in its present form, is relevant or needed in 2025 and going forward. Surely, we need some way to determine audience sizes to establish value for advertisers. Commercial radio in the United States is just that, and while clusters and companies can bring in some dollars in non-traditional ways, offering advertisers access to audiences via commercial spots remains the main driver of revenue.
All of us who have been in the business for more than a few days know the drill about ratings. We understand AQH and cume. We more or less understand how PPM works. We understand the diary service. Everyone thinks they understand weighting, if only because it occasionally helps and sometimes screws you. And everyone knows Nielsen charges an arm and a leg for their services.
In recent years, we’ve seen more groups try to get away from Nielsen’s grip. When Ed Levine left Nielsen and switched to Eastlan for his Galaxy stations in upstate New York, that was a big deal. Now, others are passing on the service. Craig Karmazin’s Good Karma does not use Nielsen but instead puts together other data to make their case to advertisers in some major markets. Even here in Bowling Green, 7 Mountains does not subscribe to Nielsen, and, per my understanding, only one cluster in the market is still on board.
Recently, Xperi, which owns DTS AutoStage, released a limited amount of data about specific stations that went all-Christmas. DTS AutoStage is in a limited, but growing, number of vehicles in the US—now close to nine million, according to the company. The system has return path data so that listening in vehicles can be aggregated to report shares. The company says data is available in 250 US markets.
The release showed major increases for all-Christmas stations over the Thanksgiving holiday, led by KKCW in Portland. This jibes with analyses I ran at Cumulus using PPM data that showed Christmas music has dual peaks. The first is during Thanksgiving, and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the second peak is just before, during, and shortly after Christmas. My advice to stations going all-Christmas has continued to be that you should start the week of Thanksgiving and not earlier.
While DTS AutoStage is not in every car and there aren’t agreements with every OEM, what they do have is “big data.” I can’t do more than speculate, but the data seems a logical fit for Nielsen’s methodology, much as Nielsen has done with video—the Big Data Plus Panel service. Could a Nielsen/Xperi combined service offer more data at a lower cost?
But the value question around radio audience measurement doesn’t stop at our border. Last month, the annual ASI conference was held in Copenhagen. The conference covers both radio/audio and TV/video measurement. I considered attending, but getting to Copenhagen was more headache than it was worth.
Many of the presentations are available online. I watched the presentation of the paper that won this year’s Tony Twyman Award for the best contribution to a greater understanding of radio and audio audiences. It was given by Dr. Tanja Hackenbruch, the CEO of Mediapulse, which is the sole provider of radio and TV audience estimates in Switzerland.
It’s hard to compare Swiss radio to US radio, as the public broadcaster (SRG/SSR) has a huge audience, yet commercial radio exists there. Also, SRG/SSR went full DAB at the start of 2025, turning off all their analog FM transmitters. That change led to a 14% drop in audience compared to a 2% decline in overall radio listening in the country. Per Dr. Hackenbruch’s presentation, SRG/SSR (the public broadcaster) is considering restarting FM transmissions.
What was most startling about her presentation was that Swiss radio broadcasters made it clear that their present system was too expensive. With a JIC and being the sole provider, Mediapulse worked with their clients to design a new system expected to go into effect in 2028. Rather than explain it here, the key point is that the cost will drop by approximately half. Yes, half. Of course, the broadcasters are giving up some things to get the price point down.
The US system doesn’t operate that way, but when will radio companies get together and tell Nielsen that the current system is not affordable anymore? Did Cumulus start the ball rolling by taking Nielsen to court over antitrust? Will more companies follow Good Karma and 7 Mountains and go without?
If you have 15 minutes to spare, watch Dr. Hackenbruch’s presentation (it’s in English). Mediapulse uses the GfK watch as a meter with audio matching, which is very different from PPM, but the key point is that the Swiss radio industry knew that changes had to be made, and Mediapulse responded. Maybe we need that kind of cooperation here.
Let’s meet again next week.
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