Half of Urban format P1s report waking up in the morning to a cell phone, compared to 30 percent of Americans age 12+. In addition, two-thirds of Urban format P1s own a smartphone, which is far higher than average, compared to 53 percent of Americans age 12+. To learn more, Arbitron clients can download the full Urban format P1s presentation free of charge from Arbitron at my.arbitron.com. Previous studies, including the full Infinite Dial 2013 study, may be downloaded free of charge from Edison Research here and also via the Arbitron website at www.arbitron.com.
Perspectives, News & Opinions From The Researchers At Edison
New from Arbitron/Edison Research Infinite Dial Study: Urban Format P1s Are Far More Likely to Wake Up in the Morning to a Cell Phone
New from Arbitron/Edison Research Infinite Dial: Adult Contemporary Format P1s Are Much More Likely to Own a Tablet
About four in ten AC format P1s own a tablet (39 percent), compared to about three in ten (29 percent) Americans age 12+. To learn more, Arbitron clients can download the full AC format P1s presentation free of charge from Arbitron at my.arbitron.com. Previous studies, including the full Infinite Dial 2013 study, may be downloaded free of charge from Edison Research here and also via the Arbitron website at www.arbitron.com.
Moms and Media 2013: Media Multitaskers
For those of us who are moms, multi-tasking is a given on most days. We juggle so many balls in the air that if we didn’t multi-task, things just wouldn’t get done. While multi-tasking has been a characteristic of moms for generations, 2013 moms now attack it using modern media and a couple of their best tools: smartphones and social networking. This behavior is supported by the newly released report, Moms and Media 2013, which highlights how mom is using her smartphone, her overall social media habits and how she is consuming media simultaneously.
The report, which is drawn from the Edison Research/Arbitron Infinite Dial series, showcases how moms are using technology and consuming various forms of media. Moms have specific needs that non-moms don’t and therefore use their devices in different ways. The report notes strong mobile tendencies that continue to evolve as smartphones and tablets become even more integral for moms. These devices allow for constant access to the Internet wherever moms are, and whatever they are doing.
According to Moms and Media 2013, smartphone ownership among moms continues to show growth. 64% of moms reported owning a smartphone, up from the 61% we saw in last year’s report. Also noteworthy is the steady lead that moms maintain over the total respondents 12+, with 53% of that sample saying they own a smartphone.
A good match for a busy lifestyle, tablets are fitting in nicely with mobile moms, showing significant growth over the last year. About 3 in 10 moms now own some kind of tablet.
We see that moms favor mobility in their devices so they can take Internet and specifically Facebook with them throughout the day. We see in this year’s data that cell phone has closed in on computer for how Facebook moms are accessing the site most. Just as many moms (45%) said they access Facebook most via cell phone as did those who access it most via computer (46%).
This ever increasing, mobile nature of moms allows them to fluidly multi-task with their media, boosting their total consumption on a daily basis. In ten years, mom’s time with media has grown to be more than one third of her entire day.
We now know that moms are multi-tasking with their media on the go, but Moms and Media 2013 also revealed that they are simultaneously consuming new and traditional media even at home. The majority of moms with Internet access said they share at least some part of their television viewing time with Internet usage. Without a doubt, smartphones and tablets are giving moms the means to do this, while social networking is giving them the reason. With a remote in one hand and a smartphone in the other, moms don’t have to miss a thing.
Media Habits of Moms in 2013
It is that time of year when mom is on our mind–not just because of Mother’s Day, but also for the release of our annual Moms and Media report. Moms and Media 2013, taken from the Edison Research and Arbitron Infinite Dial series, will showcase brand new data about how moms are consuming various media simultaneously, and how they are increasingly reliant on their smartphones. In addition to those new data points, the report will also highlight the changes and trends we starting tracking last year on how moms use social networking, mobile devices and how much time moms spend with all forms of media.
Even before the release of this year’s report, there are some points we already know about moms from our previous research. For instance, we know moms are partial to smartphones. According to our Moms and Media 2012 report, 61% of moms owned a smartphone last year. We also know that Internet is essential to the daily life of modern moms, and that in 2012 they spent more than 2.5 hours per day online. Last year’s study showed that social media usage drove much of that online time, with 46% of social media moms saying they access those sites several times per day. Also in that 2012 data, we observed a heavy Facebook presence for moms, with 72% having a profile page on the site.
So, to recap the 2012 data: moms are connected, mobile and social. This makes them a driving force in advertising and marketing; and thus, a highly sought after target whose opinions matter… a lot. Since moms are so important (and it is their honorary month) we will once again put their habits in the spotlight with a live webinar to show key technology trends, media consumption, and other important mobile and social behaviors that moms in 2013 share.
Please join me on Tuesday, May 14th at 2:00 pm EST when I present Moms and Media 2013. Register today to find out how moms are using mobile devices, social networking and traditional media so that you can better reach this key demographic.
Click here to register for the Moms and Media 2013 Webinar.
The Infinite Dial 2013: Navigating Digital Platforms – A Look at Radio Format P1s
Nearly Half of CHR Format P1s Have Listened to Online Radio[1] in the Last Week According to New Arbitron/Edison Research Infinite Dial Study of AM/FM Radio Format P1s
Separate Reports By Individual AM/FM Formats Available to Clients, Planned For Early May
Forty-seven percent of CHR format P1s have listened to Online Radio in the last week according to new data from The Infinite Dial 2013: Navigating Digital Platforms from Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) and Edison Research. The new data released today for Arbitron clients looks at radio format P1s from nine AM/FM Radio formats: Adult Contemporary, CHR, Classic Rock/Classic Hits, Country, News/Talk/Sports, Public Radio, Religious, Rock, and Urban.
Highlights of the study’s many findings include:
• CHR P1s have the highest Online Radio listening levels with 47 percent having listened in the last week. More than four in ten Public Radio, Rock and Urban P1s also listened to Online Radio in the last week.
• One in three Public Radio P1s have listened to audio podcasts in the past month
• CHR (75 percent), Rock (70 percent) and Urban (67 percent) P1s are the format P1s most likely to own a smartphone
• The vast majority of CHR P1s (82 percent) have a profile on any social network, with nearly half (45 percent) of these listeners using social media several times per day
• Eight percent of the population age 12+, an estimated 20 million, has signed up to receive email from the AM or FM radio station they listen to most; 20 percent of Rock P1s and 18 percent of Religious P1s have done so
“This representative and projectable study looks at how various format P1s use digital platforms, revealing that each format has a unique digital profile. Programmers and brand managers should consider these unique differences when formulating their digital strategies,” said Bill Rose, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Arbitron.
“Ninety-two percent of the population has not signed up to receive emails from the broadcast radio station they listen to most. If broadcast radio programmers are making decisions based solely on their email databases alone, this will not give them the complete picture of the digital media usage and behaviors of all of their P1s,” added Tom Webster, Vice President of Strategy and Marketing, Edison Research.
This study may be downloaded by Arbitron clients free of charge via the Arbitron website at my.arbitron.com. Previous studies, including the full Infinite Dial 2013 study (released earlier this month), may be downloaded free of charge via the Arbitron and Edison Research websites at www.arbitron.com and www.edisonresearch.com.
How the study was conducted
A total of 2,021 persons were interviewed to investigate Americans’ use of digital platforms and new media. From January 15 to February 10, 2013, telephone interviews were conducted with respondents age 12 and older chosen at random from a national sample of Arbitron’s Fall 2012 survey diarykeepers and through random digit dialing (RDD) sampling in geographic areas where Arbitron diarykeepers were not available for the survey. Diarykeepers represent 45% of the completed interviews and RDD sampled respondents represent 55% of the completed interviews. The study includes a total of 711 cell phone interviews.
To categorize separate format P1s for this study, we asked respondents, “What one AM or FM radio station do you listen to most?” Each station was then identified, and respondents were assigned as P1 to a format.
About Arbitron
Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) is an international media and marketing research firm serving the media—radio, television, cable, and out-of-home—the mobile industry, as well as advertising agencies and advertisers around the world. Arbitron’s businesses include: measuring network and local market radio audiences across the United States; surveying the retail, media, and product patterns of U.S. consumers; providing mobile audience measurement and analytics in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia; and developing application software used for analyzing media audience and marketing information data.
The Company has developed the Portable People Meter™ (PPM®) and the PPM 360™, new technologies for media and marketing research.
Portable People Meter™, PPM®, and PPM 360® are marks of Arbitron Inc.
About Edison Research
Edison Research conducts survey research and provides strategic information to a broad array of clients, including Activision, AMC Theatres, Disney, Dolby, Google, MTV, Samsung, Siemens, Time Warner, Yahoo!, The Voice of America and Zenithmedia. Edison Research works with many of the largest American radio ownership groups, including Entercom, Clear Channel, CBS Radio and Radio One. Another specialty for Edison is its work for media companies throughout the world, conducting research in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Edison Research is the sole provider of election exit poll data for the six major news organizations: ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the Associated Press. Edison is also the leading provider of consumer exit polling and has conducted face-to-face research in almost every imaginable venue.
[1]Online Radio = Listening to AM/FM radio stations online and/or listening to audio content available only on the Internet.↩
Learning To Love LinkedIn
I was at a social media conference recently where I witnessed a panel discussing various tools and platforms for online marketing. When the topic of LinkedIn came up, I was mildly surprised to hear some of the panelists display a distinct lack of love for LinkedIn, in favor of more “social-friendly” tools such as Twitter and Pinterest. It is true that the specific B2C panelists may have had very good reasons to relegate LinkedIn to a lower priority, but I have also heard plenty of case studies about LinkedIn’s utility as a B2B marketing tool.
As I reflected on this lack of LinkedLove, I thought back to this graph, which we released earlier this month as a part of our Infinite Dial study, on the relative adoption of various social platforms:
As you can see, LinkedIn is actually the second most popular social media platform, well behind Facebook (aren’t they all?) and just above Twitter (which soared in usage over the past year, by the way.)
Clearly, there are lots of Americans using LinkedIn, so it behooves marketers to at least understand those behaviors before we decide that the platform either does or does not work from a marketing perspective. But I think there is also a real “farmers vs. cowmen” sensibility at work here, as well, between Twitter users and LinkedIn users. Though it is tempting to think that we all use the same networks, the truth is far more complex. In fact, according to our Infinite Dial research, the percentage of LinkedIn users who also use Twitter is 31%.
That means, of course, that 69% of LinkedIn users do not use Twitter, so they didn’t read your awesome tweet. That’s millions of Americans who are willing to engage with others online, willing to put their profile information on display, and who spend at least some time each week “social networking” but who are not engaged (and perhaps not even interested) in “tweeting.”
Understanding that distinction might just pay off for some of you.
Station Tweets: Prolific, But Not So Engaged
With so much emphasis in recent years on tweeting as a low-cost marketing strategy, how are stations engaging with their Twitter followers? Mostly, stations are trying to drive followers to the station Website. Beyond that, their objectives are far more diffuse, and not even as directly marketing-focused as one might think.
The 2013 Edison Research/Arbitron Infinite Dial Study found that the percentage of respondents who had ever used Twitter was up sharply, from 10% to 15%. Stations were encouraged to “engage Twitter users differently than is done with Facebook.”
So last Wednesday, April 12, around 3 p.m., I analyzed one hundred of the tweets from the broad cross-section of stations I follow (too many to count but likely over a thousand) in a wide variety of formats. I didn’t include tweets from individual personalities, except when a jock was clearly tweeting on behalf of a station or as an extension of station promotion. Tweets were classified in to more than 15 categories, and a single tweet could qualify in more than one category.
Out of 100 random tweets, here’s what stations used them for:
53 — Drive traffic to the station site, for any reason. Most of these tweets had some other purpose, such as sending listeners to a station site for promotions, artist or celebrity news, or contesting. But in many cases, there was no second objective beyond driving Website traffic. Some stations weren’t even driving traffic to their own sites; a number of tweets from CBS Radio-owned stations sent listeners to stories on CBS Local sites in other markets. Five years ago, endless on-air attempts to drive listeners to a station site by any means necessary (“Lindsay did what? Go to our site”) became a running joke in the industry. Now that type of content has migrated to Twitter, and, yes, there were several about Lindsay Lohan.
28 — Artist news/gossip. In general, a lot of the artist/celebrity news and other “relatable” bits and factoids that might have once comprised an on-air jock break have moved to Facebook or Twitter. Carrie Underwood’s People interview, in which she addressed the possibility of retirement, showed up in several tweets. So did new artist releases and videos. So did the first week sales of the new album from The Band Perry on KFRG Riverside, California.
27 – Video. These weren’t necessarily tweets that drove listeners to see a video (e.g., several postings on the new Demi Lovato video); they also included other features that were illustrated with any sort of video, whether it was an artist interview, movie trailers, or news reports from a local TV station.
24 — Random Internet goofiness. Drunken man robs Stop & Shop! Deep-fried chicken-head found in box of nuggets? Rapping weathermen! Worst Mother’s Day gifts! Woman’s car hit by iPad! Circus elephant injured in drive-by shooting! If the idea is for stations to market less to their followers, but to interact with them as friends, then about a quarter of the tweets contained the sort of trifling but entertaining content that friends send to each other. Nothing here could be said to have achieved meme status; it was more often “news of the weird” from the other news sources used by station sites.
22 — Contesting/Promotions. This category included crossplugs for on-air contesting and Web-only “secret” contests, but also tweets that supported other station promotions. The common theme here was ticket giveaways, but there was also Majic 100 Ottawa’s Pinterest tie-in, “Pin And Win” and Jack FM Sacramento’s “Shiny Briefcase of Cash.” Again, less than you’d expect, especially attempting to influence behavior at a given moment.
18 – Engage directly with listeners. A few stations retweet listeners’ postings about the station. Some engage in the sort of semi-private conversations that often characterize personal Twitter exchanges. But any tweet that gave listeners a chance to interact with the station beyond merely clicking through to register for a contest was included here. Those ranged from Facebook page conversations or comments on station postings to Listener Driven Radio song voting to other request solicitations. This percentage would have likely been far higher during morning drive when stations use Facebook and Twitter to drive on-air topics. In afternoons, it was shockingly low.
12 – Create a new listening occasion. For all the emphasis, good or bad, on creating additional listening occasions, a surprisingly low number were actually cross-promoting something taking place on the air, either at that moment (Toronto’s “The Flow” encouraged listeners to tune in to hear the new Justin Timberlake single and, separately, to win concert tickets) or in general (KOSF San Francisco’s $1,000 giveaway).
12 – Hear or see music from an artist. This ranged from the handful of stations that were streaming the just-released new single from Jimmy Eat World to US99 Chicago’s links to music from the just-announced Country Hall of Fame inductees. WQQK Nashville posted singer Ray J’s just-released “I Hit It First,” widely implied that day to be about Kim Kardashian, with the headline “All-Time Low.”
11 – Feature a station sponsor. For better or worse, there was surprisingly little of this, even though Facebook and Twitter have often become the new way to keep a giveaway from taking up airtime. Any contesting that even mentioned a sponsor was included. Mix 96.5 Houston’s “Mad Men” prize pack was included, but so were several sponsored ticket giveaways and a station’s sponsored meet-and-greet with R&B singer Miguel. Country KTTS in Springfield, Missouri tweeted a giveaway with clothing designer Cowgirl Clad.
11 – Drive traffic to a station or personality’s Facebook page. Like the majority of tweets that sought to send listeners to a Website, this was a grab-bag category, although it was often the site of those “news of the weird” postings that drove listener comments.
Fewer than 10% of the tweets that were analyzed attempted to do any of the following:
Offer listeners enterprise content. Stations have a special ability to create additional entertainment for listeners, but only seven of the hundred tweets analyzed featured any. Chicago’s 101.9 The Mix posted an in-studio performance from Vicci Martinez. New York’s Power 105 had several clips of jocks interacting with artists, including one playing “slide” with Kelly Rowland. England’s Absolute Radio had the most elaborate: it had built a several weeks-long stunt out of the relationship between a personality’s brother and actor The Rock that culminated in video from a trip to Wrestlemania in the U.S.
Report breaking news. Only nine tweets contained breaking news, weather or traffic information that wasn’t music news or artist gossip, and two of those were from all-news powerhouse WTOP Washington, D.C.
Support charity efforts. With more stations chafing at the notion of turning over the airwaves to an all-day radiothon, one rationale has been that stations have so many other ways to engage with listeners for the community good. But only three tweets fell in that category. Two were part of one station’s anti-bullying campaign; the other was KMLE Phoenix’s “Pack The PODS For The Troops” effort.
The Infinite Dial 2013: Navigating Digital Platforms
Weekly Online Radio Audience Reaches an Estimated 86 Million Nationally Says New Arbitron/Edison Research Study
Study Also Reveals That More Than Half of Americans Now Own a Smartphone
One in three Americans aged 12 and older now listen to all forms of online radio[1] on a weekly basis according to the new national survey from Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) and Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2013: Navigating Digital Platforms.
The study, released today, is the 21st in a series of studies dating back to 1998. Among the many other findings:
• Fifty-three percent of all Americans aged 12 and over (an estimated 139 million people) own a smartphone; three-quarters of those aged 18-to-34 own these devices
• Weekly online radio listeners report listening for an average of 11 hours 56 minutes per week, up by more than two hours over last year’s listening levels (9 hours 46 minutes in 2012), and nearly double that reported in 2008 (6 hours 13 minutes). During the same span of time, Arbitron’s RADAR service indicates that AM/FM Radio has grown to 243 million weekly listeners and time spent listening has remained approximately two hours a day
• More than one in four Americans (27 percent) check their social network several times per day, estimated at 71 million people
• AM/FM radio is an “almost all of the times” or “most of the times” in-car choice for nearly six in ten adults aged 18 and over; dashboard AM/FM radio (58 percent) far outpaces frequent in-car use of CD players (15 percent), portable digital audio/MP3 players (11 percent) and satellite radio (10 percent)
• AM/FM Radio delivers far more consumers (49 percent) than other media during the half hour before they arrive to shop, more than twice the number reached by the next closest medium (advertising on Billboards at 21 percent)
• Twenty-nine percent own a tablet; this is up more than 70 percent in the last year, compared to 17 percent ownership in 2012
• Among the nearly half of Americans (45 percent) who say it is important to learn about and keep up-to-date with new music, AM/FM Radio is the top source for new music discovery at 78 percent
“We are now seeing the highest levels of weekly online radio listening with the increasing strength of AM/FM streams and other online radio brands and the near ubiquity of devices in which consumers can listen,” said Bill Rose, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Arbitron.
“In the smartphone, the majority of Americans now have powerful computers in their pockets, which has irrevocably altered not only out-of-home listening behavior, but out-of-home purchase behavior as well,” added Tom Webster, Vice President of Strategy and Marketing, Edison Research.
Download the Infinite Dial 2013 Presentation Slides Here
The Infinite Dial 2013 Navigating Digital Platforms from Tom Webster on Vimeo.
How the study was conducted
A total of 2,021 persons were interviewed to investigate Americans’ use of digital platforms and new media. From January 15 to February 10, 2013, telephone interviews were conducted with respondents age 12 and older chosen at random from a national sample of Arbitron’s Fall 2012 survey diarykeepers and through random digit dialing (RDD) sampling in geographic areas where Arbitron diarykeepers were not available for the survey. Diarykeepers represent 45% of the completed interviews and RDD sampled respondents represent 55% of the completed interviews. The study includes a total of 711 cell phone interviews.
About Arbitron
Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) is an international media and marketing research firm serving the media—radio, television, cable, and out-of-home—the mobile industry, as well as advertising agencies and advertisers around the world. Arbitron’s businesses include: measuring network and local market radio audiences across the United States; surveying the retail, media, and product patterns of U.S. consumers; providing mobile audience measurement and analytics in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia; and developing application software used for analyzing media audience and marketing information data.
The Company has developed the Portable People Meter™ (PPM®) and the PPM 360™, new technologies for media and marketing research.
Portable People Meter™, PPM®, and PPM 360® are marks of Arbitron Inc.
About Edison Research
Edison Research conducts survey research and provides strategic information to a broad array of clients, including Activision, AMC Theatres, Disney, Dolby, Google, MTV, Samsung, Siemens, Time Warner, Yahoo!, The Voice of America and Zenithmedia. Edison Research works with many of the largest American radio ownership groups, including Entercom, Clear Channel, CBS Radio and Radio One. Another specialty for Edison is its work for media companies throughout the world, conducting research in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Edison Research is the sole provider of election exit poll data for the six major news organizations: ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the Associated Press. Edison is also the leading provider of consumer exit polling and has conducted face-to-face research in almost every imaginable venue.
[1],em>Online Radio = Listening to AM/FM radio stations online and/or listening to audio content available only on the Internet.↩
The Songs Country Listeners Love, And Can’t Hear
Edison Research’s ethnographic study, “Country Radio’s Heartbeat: The Lives Of Your Listeners,” took Edison’s Megan Lazovick and Steve Lemma into the daily routines of nearly 20 Country radio P1s nationwide. From those visits and interviews, they observed that:
• Country music had a personal relationship — a friendship — with its listeners. Yet, Country radio continues to talk to them in the same marketing slogans of two decades ago. And now those are augmented by social media messages that are always selling something — not very friendly.
• Country radio, despite its special purchase on listeners’ affections, is in danger of becoming a primarily in-car experience like radio listening overall. Country is not immune to radio’s diminishing place on the night table, or in the house altogether. While we continue to push for radio’s inclusion on cellphones, Edison president Larry Rosin suggested that radio seek inclusion on TV cable systems, like other places around the world.
And to those observations, I’d like to add the following:
Throughout Edison’s Country Radio Seminar presentation, respondents talked about a lot of different songs that tether them to Country music. Some are titles that are still available on the radio: “Bless The Broken Road,” “What Hurts The Most,” “Friends In Low Places.” Not all are songs of earthshattering emotional significance, as evidenced by “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” and “Country Girl (Shake It For Me).”
But it was clear that there were a lot of songs that Country listeners are still visibly touched by that aren’t still on the radio.
Some were enduring hits that are just starting to fade with time and artist turnover after years in power gold (“Ain’t Going Down [Til The Sun Comes Up],” “Don’t Take The Girl,” “Amarillo By Morning,” “It’s Your Love”).
Some are Country anthems of generations long previous, such as “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
Some songs were never as iconic to begin with: Alan Jackson’s “I’ll Try,” George Jones’ “Tennessee Whiskey,” Ricky Van Shelton’s “Statue Of A Fool,” Chuck Wicks’ “Stealing Cinderella.”
Nobody would argue that most of those songs, especially the last group, would easily fit on a hit-driven mainstream country radio station. Even if you agree with some CRS attendees that country’s youth movement is driving it too far, too fast, the likely response would be to hold on to a small handful of ‘90s smashes a little longer. And yet the songs associated with key life moments were more likely to be “The Song Remembers When” than “Dust On The Bottle.”
Country P1s, in other words, like more music than is readily available on today’s Country radio, or should be. Put even the biggest early ‘90s songs back on some stations and you’d be playing records that many of today’s listeners haven’t heard. And that’s why it is time to once again ask if there should be two types of Country radio stations in most markets — one of them older and more variety-driven.
In a few of Country’s stronghold markets, that model already exists, certainly more so than a decade ago. But the “hits and variety” position is tamped down by the reticence of stations to cede the younger position (especially now), the reluctance of GSMs to sell that format, and by a music industry that really does not want to promote two charts.
This would not be the first CRS where somebody has identified the opportunity for older music. In 1994, PDs returned from Nashville and mistakenly sought to head off the possibility of an older targeted format by throwing the ‘80s titles back into their young country formats. Over the last decade, a desire for older Country has provoked knowing titters, but little change, during several CRS presentations. But seeing listeners moved to tears by songs that aren’t on the radio makes the demand harder to laugh off.
And because the Edison presentation was a tribute to the power of personal testimony, we can add one more revelation. While a then-and-now Country format has to play the hits, there is probably room for a tier of Jack- or Bob-FM-like depth. Those songs should be staged by a liner not about remembering the Country legends, but by listeners talking about what individual songs mean to them. After all, even a room full of Country PDs paid attention to that.
Radio Guru Turns Podcast Curator
Norm Pattiz, founder of Westwood One and the inventor of radio syndication, talks to the L.A. Times about his latest venture, PodcastOne, and Edison’s involvement. Read the whole article here.