WHAT’S UP WITH BBM? Chris Byrnes – ByrnesMedia The S4 2007 BBM results caused a few people to scratch their heads across the country. There were a number of instances where great sounding radio stations took a real dive and more than a few clunkers received a real boost in ratings.
When you dig into the numbers carefully, the one area that jumps out in several markets is a lower sample size. For example, in Calgary, diary returns were down 19%, and in Thunder Bay the returns were down 14% (Adults 12+ Fall 2003 to S4 2007). “The returns are approximately 95% of target and have been in that range for the past 4 books,” says Jim McLeod, President and CEO of BBM Canada. Male returns were again down in several markets, and in the Ottawa Anglo book more than 10% of the tuning simply vanished from the market. This prompted one Ottawa radio group to issue an 8 page letter to advertisers suggesting they look closely at the results of the S4 BBM. The Ottawa BBM results were not helped because of the antics of one station who broke the rules and may have influenced the results.
We’ve known for a long time that less that 50% of those people who receive the at-random phone call, meet the criteria and agree to take part in the BBM survey actually return a completed diary. This is why BBM employs the method of diary flooding which means once they find one person in a household who agrees to complete the survey they then ask how many other people are in the house over the age of 12, and they flood that household with diaries in the hope that more than the one person who agreed to take part in the survey will do so.
One of the challenges facing all survey companies is recruiting people willing to participate in a survey and there are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, it’s becoming harder to reach people because of technology such as call blocking and call screening. People are also busier than ever, and perhaps are becoming fatigued by the volume of unsolicited phone calls. This means more unlisted phone numbers and calls going directly to voice mail never to be returned.
So what is to be done? I know the people at BBM struggle with this frequently, but I thought I’d offer a few suggestions to hopefully make the process a little easier and, ideally, increase the number of diaries that are returned across the country in 2008.
Create An Awareness Campaign: BBM could create a series of radio spots to explain the importance of the process, sell the benefits of taking part in a radio survey and let people know that they may receive a call from BBM. This could run on all stations to be surveyed several weeks before the measurement period and just before they are recruiting the panel. That way no one could accuse radio or BBM of trying to stack the deck. However, this would require every radio station in the survey markets to agree to run the campaign and it would need to be weighted based on the standard reach and frequency formulas to ensure the message reached the listeners in equal proportions. BBM would need to control the content, and an arms length ad agency would book the time, but all radio stations would need to agree to abide by the rules and run the schedule as booked. The thing that would kill this idea is the big companies in the large markets not wanting to give up the inventory.
Up The Incentive: Offering a toonie taped in the back of the diaries is clearly not much of an incentive these days. You cannot even buy a large cup of java with $2 in 2008. BBM pays up to $5 per diary for some of the harder to reach younger demos but that too appears to be missing the mark based on some of the low sample sizes in markets today. Perhaps BBM should consider offering a range of appealing prizes on the back page and asking people to select from a travel prize, a car or $10,000 cash. Then at the end of the survey period they conduct a random draw and the winner gets to select his or her prize. I suspect more people would agree to participate and it would be an added incentive to that 50% who agree to take part but for various reasons never send back their diaries. There is, of course, the danger that the number of blank dairies would increase as people eager to win a prize complete the contest portion but don’t participate in the survey. I understand that BBM has tried different incentives in some test markets, including downloading music, but this experiment was less than successful, and appeared to introduce some wobbles in the data. “It’s more of a compliance issue than a recruiting issue,” says BBM. That is why they conduct follow up phone calls and reach most people who do not send back their diaries and encourage them to do so. Jim McLeod told me, “We have tried increasing the incentive and the return rate does improve when we pay more but this also increases the costs for stations.”
Expand The Recruiting Sample: BBM selects numbers at random out of the phone book, but they also use RDD (Random Digit Dialing) to recruit about 10% of the sample in order to reach people who are not listed in the phone book or have an unlisted number. However, the real issue with the current methodology is that those who no longer have a landline will not get a call. More and more people are choosing to have only one phone in the house and that being a cell phone. Cell phones are not listed in the phone book unless specifically requested. This is one reason why it’s harder for BBM to find people under the age of 25. South of the border, the people at Arbitron recently admitted the growing percentage of Americans who rely exclusively on cell phones has wreaked havoc with their sampling efforts among younger demos. BBM tells me they are looking at this and expect to have a solution within the next few months. The challenge is that cell phones are not geographically anchored so while I might live in the 905 area I might choose to have a 416 cell phone. Number portability for landlines is also becoming an issue and may impact a research company’s ability to ensure their sample is geographically balanced.
Conclusion: The current diary method of measuring radio listening is not a perfect system by any means, but it’s the one we must live with for the time being. BBM is eager for feedback so if you have any ideas, talk to your representative at BBM. We need to do all we can to refine the process and make it the best it can be. |