Telos: Voltair Still Offers Ratings Advantage

The Telos Alliance announced findings Thursday that show Voltair still provides broadcasters with a signficant ratings advantage, even on enhanced CBET (eCBET).

Nielsen launched eCBET in late 2015 in response to the disruptive Voltair, which broadcasters were using to optimize their transmission of watermarks. eCBET was supposed to address some of the encoding issues with CBET technology that the Voltair unit brought to light.

After several months of research both in the lab and in the field, the Telos Alliance has come to the conclusion that Voltair is still very useful for broadcasters who want to make sure they are getting credit for every  listener using a Portable People Meter.

Broadcasters using Voltair have reported that it still provides a significant ratings advantage, even with eCBET. The proof is in toggle-testing, where a station can easily vary Voltair’s enhancement level for each quarter hour, then track the ratings results for the quarter-hours with and without Voltair enhancement. This capability is built into every Voltair.

Here are two examples of the many toggle tests underway in 2016:

• An FM talk/music station in a top-10 market found that the quarter-hours with Voltair set to 12 were 7.8% higher than the quarter-hours without Voltair.

• An AM news/talk station in a top-25 market experienced a 10.3% increase in the quarter-hours with Voltair set to 12 than the quarter-hours without Voltair.

Telos CEO Frank Foti Thursday told RadioInk, “Our goal at Telos is simple: We think radio should get ratings credit for all the listening that actually occurs. We love hearing our clients talk about 10% increases in Voltair toggle tests. To us, a 10% ratings increase is a pretty big deal.”