Not being in the radio “biz”, I didn’t know the term “posting” before yesterday. What I do know as a careful listener is that radio routinely tries to cheat advertisers. My perception from the outside is that advertisers don’t trust Radio people as far as they can throw them.
“Posting” apparently is the process of the radio station logging when they played a client’s ads and providing detailed reports to prove that they actually met the terms of the contract, and didn’t push all the ads to 6:02 AM or 11:58 PM to save the prime radio slots for their more important clients or play the same ad 5 times in a row.
There is at least one service out there that has “listening posts” whose job it is to automatically “listen” to every radio station in a city and record when a station plays each ad (the ads are electronically watermarked so they can be detected by a computer). This is one way a campaign can be independently monitored to make sure the advertiser is getting what they paid for. That process apparently cleared up the worst of the abuses.
Now with people carrying around the PPM meters in most major markets, that adds in another level of detail – not just that the commercials were played, but which types of people heard the ad (as opposed to changing the channel or turning the volume down). By sorting through the PPM data, you can now give a very precise estimate on the number and type of people who actually heard your ad – completely out of the control of manipulation by the radio station.
Radio One is the company I would have thought to be the least likely radio company to jump on the posting bandwagon. “Black” radio has been especially hard hit by the PPM – it was discovering big differences between what people said they listened to under the diary system and what they actually did listen to. It was not uncommon for the ratings company to get a diary with a straight line from 6 AM to 10 PM every day listening to their community’s radio station. PPM data proved those types of diaries were inaccurate, which is why the Democrats are on the war path. Truth is not what matters, only winning.
If you made a list of the top 5 radio station owners that are likely to fail soon, Radio One has to be on that list. Their debt has about the worst possible rating, their revenue is way down, and their losses are way up.
Maybe they have seen the value in leading the way in being a reliable partner with their advertisers.