Nielsen Talks Tuesday About Voltair

Nielsen is preparing to address the controversy that erupted in recent months surrounding the impact of a new device, called Voltair, on radio ratings produced by its Portable People Meter technology.

Mediapost reports the ratings giant will first discuss its stance on Voltair and PPM with clients in a conference call and Webinar on Tuesday, July 21.

Developed and manufactured by the Telos Alliance, Voltair works by boosting the encoded signal in radio programming that serves as an inaudible “watermark,” allowing PPM to detect the signal when the panelist carrying the device is nearby, thus giving the station credit for the audio exposure.

Beginning last summer, radio industry watchers started noticing an unusual phenomenon. After years of mostly even ratings or gradual changes, audience ratings for individual radio stations were suddenly spiking by 30% or more in a month after they started using Voltair.

This revelation has raised a whole slew of awkward issues. The most obvious question is whether the PPM can actually detect all the encoded signals included in various types of programming.

In order to keep the digital watermark inaudible, Arbitron, which developed PPM before being acquired by Nielsen in 2013, lowered the energy of the encoded signal to a level that PPM could supposedly still pick up without interrupting the listening experience. However, some types of programming, most notably talk radio, don’t always produce enough energy in this range to mask the signal effectively due to frequent pauses, causing the system to lower the signal or stop encoding altogether.

Arbitron compensated for this with statistical calculations bridging the gaps in measurement in order to give stations credit even when encoding wasn’t active.

It now appears that the measurement gaps are more substantial than previously believed, resulting in large apparent drop-offs in ratings for these formats. This is potentially a serious issue; after PPM was introduced in 2007-2008, much of the conventional wisdom about radio listening (based on Arbitron’s previous paper diary measurement system) was turned on its head, with formats like talk radio suffering major drops in ratings. Radio programmers adjusted their strategies accordingly, in many cases laying off on-air talent or opting for non-talk formats.

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