PICKING UP A CLEARER SIGNAL

First data from UAE radio survey is on its way.

On 12 February, measurement company Nielsen will release the first results of its Radio Audience Measurement (RAM) survey for the UAE. The project has been underwritten by Dubai-based broadcaster Arabian Radio Network (ARN), but with other market players including Abu Dhabi Media, Dubai Media Incorporated and Zee on the steering committee, about 70 per cent of all the UAE’s radio stations are now involved with the project. That is the calculation of Sarah Messer, director of media for the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan at Nielsen. The project has initial funding for five years.

Last summer Nielsen undertook a large-scale establishment survey of about 17,000 residents. This allowed Nielsen to be meticulous in picking its panel of more than 2,000 respondents for the survey proper, making sure that demographics such as age, gender, nationality and emirate of residence are representative of the UAE as a whole. Even regional Indian languages have been matched to the UAE’s population.

Each person on the panel has recorded a seven-day radio listening diary, marking what they have listened to (if and when they have been listening to the radio) in 15-minute segments. They have also recorded how they listened – over AM or FM, through a mobile phone or over the internet, for example – and where – in the car, at work or at home. Any diary that doesn’t answer those questions is rejected when the data is processed.

Panellists were given a choice of using paper diaries or digital ones. Surprisingly for a country with one of the highest smart phone penetrations in the world, only 10 per cent of respondents chose to use digital diaries. Messer says Nielsen even made the paper diaries look less attractive at one point, to remove artificial bias when respondents chose how they would record their listening.

That sort of detail is part of the auditing that RAM has had to go through. Independent auditors PWC have been involved since they ran the pitch and selected Nielsen at the start, and Messer says they have questioned every part of the process so far.

One of PWC’s roles, as well as ensuring impartiality, is to ensure that as far as possible potential critics of the survey will not be able to find flaws. “Because of how difficult this market can be in accepting data and so on, we’ve really made sure that there are no methodological holes,” says Messer. She is passionate about this, saying: “I personally will not stand in front of the industry if I am not confident in the numbers. But equally if there’s a hole in the methodology there will be some guy sat in a room somewhere who will stick his finger in it and pull it apart, because that’s just the way the landscape has worked here. And as a team we have worked very, very hard to make sure there are no holes.”

There has been radio data available in the UAE before, but the sample wasn’t ideal. Speaking to

Campaign last year, Steve Smith – ARN’s chief operating officer at the time – said: “The biggest issues I’ve had with some of the other data that is available in the market at the moment … is the sample is nowhere near a reflection of the market.”

Messer says: “The credibility of the data that has existed in this market is questioned in every single meeting that I have.”

The RAM programme is not a straight measure of listener numbers. “We are not measuring radio listeners; we are measuring radio listening in the population,” says Messer.

It will introduce new metrics to the market, she adds: “This is going to bring a whole new set of measures … like time spent listening, and being able to follow people across stations and to look at station loyalty.”

This will benefit agencies and advertisers, and may encourage marketers to spend more money on radio. It will also help the stations improve their offerings.

Messer says: “If you know for the first time that your drive time programme is not performing as well as you thought it was, you improve your content. The whole craft of radio goes up a level. And when the craft of radio goes up a level you get more audiences listening, or people going to more, different stations and staying with the stations. And that’s win-win all round. That’s a win for broadcasters, a win for advertisers and a win for agencies.”