Numeris' Derrick Gray: Radio's New Way to Count

Nearly six years after I released an episode called Death of the Diary, It's the dawn of a new era for Canadian radio with the release of Radio Local + by Numeris.Derrick Gray, Chief Research and Operations Officer at Numeris, joins me to explain Radio Local+—the hybrid ratings system replacing the online radio diary in 22 Canadian markets. The system combines streaming information with online and telephone surveys to estimate total listening, including traditional over-the-air radio.Derrick explains how Numeris turns device-level streaming activity into demographic audience estimates, filters bots and abnormally long sessions, and determines whether a listener belongs to the local market. We also discuss why testing revealed significantly more audience reach than expected—and what Numeris had to fix before launch.Radio Local + will deliver four ratings releases annually using a 13-week rolling average, replacing the diary’s two annual releases and 48-week average. That should give programmers and advertisers a more current view of changing listener behaviour.The Three Best Things We Talked About: How Radio Local+ combines streaming data with audience surveys to measure total radio listeningWhy the new system found more listeners than the diary—and what Numeris learned during testingHow quarterly ratings and future impression-based metrics could change radio programming and advertisingRadio Local + is not the finished destination. It is the first stage of a larger Numeris audio strategy that could eventually include additional markets, national radio reach and audience metrics that are easier to compare with podcasts and other digital media.NEW! The podcast is now available in on video on Apple Podcasts, iHeart, and Amazon Music in the USA. (And naturally YouTube)Please sign up for the SOUNDING OFF Newsletter. All the things that went unsaid on the show.Also we added the Sound Off Podcast to the The Open Podcast Prefix Project (OP3) A free and open-source podcast prefix analytics service committed to open data and listener privacy. You can be a nosey parker by checking out our downloads here.Thank you Megatrax for continuously supporting the showSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.