The rubber’s about to hit the methodological road with the October start date for
New York’s PPM ratings.  Two new rules added to Paragon Media Strategies’ PPM Rulebook this week directly address reliability transparency with the Personal People Meter: 

“Demand Better Internal Sample Management from Arbitron”Sample quotas must be met for individual age, gender, and ethnic cells; not just the total sample.  We’re dealing with a relatively small sample panel to begin with. 

“Don’t Sweat the Rankers”There’s little difference between number one and number 15 ranked stations In Houston’s 25-54 AQH Ratings, so using Rankers is futile. 

The stability in AQH Ratings is Arbitron’s trump card in PPM reliability.  They rightly point out that Gross Ratings Points are bought on AQH Ratings. 

AQH Ratings is a percentage of the population listening to any given station.  Share is the percentage of all people listening to radio.  By definition the Ratings are going to be a much smaller percentage and therefore vary less. 

Programmers look at their relative Shares within target demos and within dayparts.  During the August Arbitron PPM conference call, independent analysts like those from Interep expressed concerned about fluctuating PPM Shares. 

Transparency is at hand: A real world litmus about to unfold.  We need to look at the stability of Shares for individual demos and dayparts.  We’ll quickly have a sampling crisis if the Shares don’t parallel the stability Arbitron cites in AQH Ratings data.  Wild fluctuations in Shares could send Arbitron back to the drawing board in designing reliable in-tab sample for PPM, which would pose a problem for Arbitron’s profitability as a company. 

You can view the entire PPM Rulebook by going to www.ppmrulebook.com, or through the Paragon homepage (www.paragonmediastraties.com).  The PPM Rulebook is interactive so you can offer contributions about how to best program for the new realities in a PPM World. 

Also click the PPM or Larry Johnson tabs on the right of our blog to access my Aug. 23^rd post for a full discussion about PPM sampling.