Back to Basics: Show Your Station’s Targetability with Composition Reports

July 7, 2022

Are you having difficulties convincing an advertiser that you are the right station for reaching their target consumer? This is most likely even harder if you are not a top-ranked station. What can you do to prove the value of your listeners?

We have a few ideas for you …

One of the best tools you have to prove the value of your audience is by showing the Composition of your station. Composition is the percentage of your audience that meets a specific criteria. For example: 70% of our listeners are aged 25-54, or 40% of our listeners are planning to buy furniture this year.

Composition shows the targetability of your station. It also shows efficiency – your station’s ability to reach a specific target consumer. You can convert this to ‘cost efficiency.’ Let’s take the example above for furniture buyers. Convert the 40% to 40 cents for this statement – “40 cents of every dollar you spend on our station will reach someone who is planning to buy furniture.” Do you think this will get the attention of the advertiser? Sure it will … they want to know that they are not wasting their money. This is especially effective to use with local direct accounts.

Now that we have the concept of composition down, as well as a tool to convert to money spent, let’s talk about the different types of information you can show for composition.

Nielsen provides the following Composition reports in Tapscan:

• Age – You can get both specific age cells or break out an age group by gender.
• County – Shows the percentage of your listeners that live in each county.
• Ethnicity – Black, Hispanic, and Other depending on your market.
• Language – English and Spanish in markets where it’s available.
• Listening Location – In PPM markets, you have At Home and Away from Home. Diary markets show At Home, In Car, At Work, and Other. Great way to show how radio and your station are closest to point of purchase.
• Loyalty – This shows those listeners that are Exclusive (only listen to you) or Preferred (listen mostly to your station).
• Working Persons – If listeners work Full-time, Part-time, or Other.

You will also find some composition (% of target/audience) in these reports which might be helpful:

• Rankers – AQH or Cume composition.
• Rankers-Outside – shows the difference between Metro, DMA, and Total Survey Area. Use this report if geographic coverage is important to the advertiser.
• Instant Qualitative Profile – show the percentages for the socioeconomic aspects of your listeners.
• Target Profile – profile your station for the specific qualitative criteria of the advertiser’s consumer.

As you can see from the lists above, composition can be found in many reports. Composition is a great way to show the efficiency and targetability of your radio station in reaching a specific consumer group for an advertiser. Now you have additional tools to help the advertiser as well as increase your sales!

For additional help to find your best stories, reach out to us here.

-Karen Morriss, Director of Client Services

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