February 20, 2025
One of the buzz phrases spawned by the digital age is brand safety. In the Wild West that is digital ad placement, many brands have no clue as to where their ads appear. They might think they know, but the reality is a bit fuzzy.
In his most recent newsletter, Bob Hoffman – aka The Ad Contrarian – wrote about a peer reviewed study written by Dr. Krzysztof Franaszek, the head of Adalytics. I won’t quote the entire article, but these few paragraphs should startle you:
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February 13, 2025
I live in a two book a year market that is dominated by two radio groups.
Group #1 has many live and local stations. They also recently established a local digital news site. This group is frequently seen in the community doing, well, community stuff. In other words – they have a presence.
To the best of my knowledge, the other group has zero local live personalities. I have rarely seen them in the community. When I have, their “presence” consisted of a sound system…and nothing else. I frequently drive by their local so-called headquarters. The parking lot is usually empty, and the building has been up for sale for several months. It would appear that this group is completely abandoning the market.
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February 6, 2025
As an industry, we have a tendency to play a lot of defense. While radio has weathered many storms over the last 100 years, the dawn of the digital age drastically and dramatically changed the media landscape.
Yet, to paraphrase a quote from Monty Python – “We’re not dead yet.”
We need to play more offense. I want to highlight two areas where the power of radio continues to shine.
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January 31, 2025
We are here to bid a fond farewell to the HOLIDAY book. The Ratings Experts from RESEARCH DIRECTOR, INC. – in complete agreement with the leaping lords of the algorithms at XTRENDS – have had enough of this CHRISTMAS stuff. We can pack it all away in mislabeled containers until next fall.
This survey ran from DECEMBER 5TH through JANUARY 9TH and, surprisingly enough, featured two holidays. It was also a five-week survey, which meant that only the first three weeks were contaminated with the foul stench from BURL IVES. This was the final time we will be encumbered by the NIELSEN five-minute rule. The next time we gather our spreadsheets will be filled with more PUMM than we have seen in a while. We await that with anxious anticipation.
Now, on with the show…
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January 30, 2025
The Ratings Experts from RESEARCH DIRECTOR, INC. – along with the math mavens from XTRENDS – are back with another attempt at making sense out of the ratings. As you are well aware, the HOLIDAY book is sort of the forgotten survey. Any station with a bad book can chalk it up to those dastardly bells and drummers.
This book is notable for a few things. First, it was five weeks long. This allowed NIELSEN to readjust its circadian rhythms. As a result, the CHRISTMAS carnage only affected the first three weeks of the book, which ran from DECEMBER 5TH through JANUARY 8TH.
This is also the book where we bid a fond farewell to the five-minute rule. We wish it well in its future endeavors.
Let’s go inside the numbers…
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One of the buzz phrases spawned by the digital age is brand safety. In the Wild West that is digital ad placement, many brands have no clue as to where their ads appear. They might think they know, but the reality is a bit fuzzy.
