Week of March 10, 2008

Fun With Formats, Fall 2007

Friday, March 14, 2008

Here are a few fun facts about the performance of various formats from Arbitron's Quarterly "American Radio Listening" report. Most of these numbers are for format groups, not just individual formats. For example, the AC group includes Mainstream AC, Hot AC, Soft AC, etc.

* AC was the top format group in the Fall book with a 15.2 share nationally. This is the best performance for AC since a 15.3 in the Fall of 2000. Mainstream AC, not new flavors like Rhythmic AC, accounted for the increase.

* CHR tied for its 2nd lowest share ever, 10.8 (worsted only by the 10.7 a eyar ago). Both variations, Pop and Rhythmic, were down, but it was the 8th straight book where Pop beat Rhythmic.

* Pop and Rhythmic CHR have vastly different audience profiles. Pop CHR is 64% female, while Rhythmic is only 51% female. On the other hand, 49% of the average Pop station is 25-54, while only 41% of Rhythmic listeners come from the upper demos.

* Rock's national share dropped from 7.8 to 7.5, its 3rd worst showing ever. The two worst were Fall '06 and Winter '07. However, given the dynamics of the markets with the PPM, expect this trend to reverse itself as the PPM rollout resumes.

* Persons Using Radio (all formats) dropped again. The biggest drops were with teens, men and 18-24's. Listening among those 50+ actually increased.

More Creative Artist Initiatives

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Radiohead's pay-what-you-want scheme generated a lot of publicity, sales and downloads last year. Now Trent Reznor is getting attention for a similar initiative involving free downloads and tiered pricing for the new Nine Inch Nails album. Plenty of other artists are trying new things, whether in association with their major label deals, or by doing it on their own. An example of the former is R.E.M. which will be streaming its new album, Accelerate, exclusively on iLike, starting on March 24th, one week before its in-store release on April 1st.

A good example of the latter is Jill Sobule, who had a hit with "I Kissed A Girl" a few years ago, and who is releasing her own album with the help of her fans, who advanced her $75,000 to record, promote and publicize it. She raised the sum in just about 2 months, with fans paying between $10 (including a free download of the album) to $10,000 (a British fan will get to sing with Jill on one song).

Targeted Cable TV Ads

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Trying to match the Internet for targeted advertising, a consortium of cable companies is pushing the same idea for cable TV, according to an article in the New York Times. Project Canoe is a shared initiative by Time Warner, Comcast, Cox, Cablevision and Brighthouse Networks designed to customize commercials to viewers based on household demographics.

It's not a new idea in the TV industry, but the cable companies have never really done much to make it a reality. Finally, after years of inaction and the meteoric rise of Internet advertising, the companies have agreed to work together. They'll spend $150 million to develop a system to create and distribute customized ads.

The cable companies have the potential to do much more with this than Google and other Internet advertising companies. The cable companies have even more precise demographic data than the Internet companies and they have more detailed user information thanks to the set top box that those customers use to watch programming. The set top boxes are like tracking cookies on steroids, giving the companies much more accurate viewing information.

Broadband Mobile: If You Build It, They Will Come

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

According to an article in Ars Technica, a recent study shows that mobile broadband use has increased by 154% from 2006 to 2007. This is a result of many factors, especially falling costs for mobile broadband access and an increasing number of devices to access it. 60% of the usage is done at work, primarily from computers, rather than mobile phones and other handheld devices. Still, mobile broadband still looks a lot like a luxury item: those making in excess of $100,000 annually are 37% more likely to use it than average.

Another Medium Goes Digital

Monday, March 10, 2008

The latest advertising medium to go digital is billboards. An increasing number of these are sprouting up around key traffic arteries all over the world. Arbitron recently released a study of the effectiveness of the digital boards. They focused on boards in and around Cleveland. The bottom line is that most respondents were aware of them, were positive about the idea and they showed strong recall of the specific messages.

Any update to a medium that helps advertising cut through the clutter is inevitably going to spread. The brighter colors, the quick-changing messages and the pure novelty of it are contributing to the success of these boards. And the best news of all for advertisers is that younger viewers were the most positive of all about the digital boards.