Nielsen Makes Headphone Adjustment

Starting with the October 2020 PPM Monthly data, Nielsen has tld subscirber that it will apply a PPM Headphone Adjustment factor to account for the variety of ways panelists hear radio station streams whether out loud via radio speaker, computer speaker, or privately via wired or wireless headphone.

In a webinar Tuesday Nielsen admitted that consumer use of wireless headphones is growing and the Portable People Meter device is not compatible with that technology.  The company has created preview reports to help customers understand the headphone adjustment.

Nielsen PPM Headphone Adjustment Preview Reports are now available from stations reps and in the Audio Workspace, Nielsen PPM folder on Answers. Stations are urged to refer to the Special Notices Section of the Local Radio eBook for information about the respective surveys from which the preview data is derived as well as a link to Nielsen Audio’s Description of Methodology.

The headphone adjustment will be applied to the quarter-hours of listening to encoded streams. The adjustment factors will be the same for all markets and dayparts, but will differ slightly by broad demo groups. The actual lift that an individual stream will receive will depend on the demographic composition of the stream’s listeners and the number of Quarter Hours credited to the stream. All encoded streams are eligible for the adjustment.