Those of us in public relations can all agree that an important issue in our industry is accurate evaluation of the ROI we deliver to clients. One area that has proven challenging for some is measuring the success of radio outreach, placements and listener numbers from the time(s) a story aired. The most reliable tracking and reporting data for radio listeners in the United States comes from Arbitron, the consumer research company. While there may be other important standards like message delivery, positive tone and audience demographics, we all tend to start with the audience numbers. Let’s examine those numbers and which are best to measure public relations outreach.
Arbitron operates on a subscription basis with radio stations that rely on audience data for their programming, ad sales, etc. Stations must subscribe to Arbitron to be included in audience research and to receive the results. Arbitron measures network and local-market radio audiences throughout the United States and publishes results on a quarterly basis. The published listener information is used by radio stations to set ad rates and sell air time. From a public relations perspective, the listener information provides the audience reach of stories aired on stations throughout the county. If you cannot find Arbitron data for a particular station, then you can assume that the station is not an Arbitron subscriber.