The metrics data that Triton provides to clients for their stations and markets can be used to evaluate their performance in many different ways. "How can we identify underperforming stations and markets?" is an important question to answer in any broadcast company. This article provides a selection of reporting methodologies to answer this question.
Trending
One of the most basic forms of performance reporting is trend reporting, which turns Triton metrics data (e.g., Total Listening Hours, Session Starts, CUME, etc.) into a visualization showing a trend over time as a graph. Desired frequency of the update of such reporting will vary depending on the issue at hand and the capability of your reporting infrastructure. For example, companies with automated data ingestion and reporting capabilities might want to publish daily updates to station and market metrics, whereas companies that use an analyst to pull data and then manually construct and distribute reports might opt for weekly or monthly. Due to the often seasonal cycles in radio consumption by listeners, looking at data by month a 13 month historical view is useful as this allows for year-over-year comparisons of the same month. Similarly, if looking at data on a weekly basis, looking back 53 weeks might be desirable to see the same week in the prior year.
Using such trending analyses, stations and markets that are not increasing their metrics year over year can be considered as underperforming. Alternatively, an aggregated rate of increase for your entire organization can be calculated. Stations and markets that fall below this might then be considered as underperforming. See the benchmarking section below for more ideas on setting a threshold for "underperformance."
Ranking
Another simple reporting methodology is ranking your stations and markets. Ranking based on total volumes of a particular metric is possible, but due to the different listener population sizes in different markets this might not be particularly useful other than to show you your most important markets in terms of measurement metrics.
Ranking on the growth rate of a metric such as Total Listening Hours and/or listeners (CUME) over a particular time period might be more useful for evaluating the comparative performance of different stations and markets. For example: use Triton data to calculate the growth rate in listeners (CUME) year-over-year for all of your stations and markets individually, rank them based on that growth rate, and then establish a cutoff rate that you consider to be underperformance. This method gives a ranking that isn't dependent on the audience size in a particular market but rather on the growth rate achieved; a flat playing field for streaming growth performance evaluation that is independent of market size.
Share of home market potential listeners
Triton data can be filtered to provide a cohort of listeners to a station or market that is based in the home market only. It is then possible to pair this data with non-Triton data on the population of the home market, to show the station/market's "share of home market potential listeners." Calculating this metric for all your stations and markets and then ranking them according to this metric is another way of establishing which of them are underperforming: the higher the share of a population that is listening to your stations in a market, the better.
Benchmarking
Specific metrics, and growth rates in specific metrics, can be evaluated as good or bad by comparing to the rest of your station or market fleet as in the methods given above. But setting cutoff points for what constitutes an underperforming station or market is somewhat arbitrary without a benchmark supported by research. Using studies such as The Infinite Dial – a collaboration between Triton and Edison Research – you may be able to find benchmark metrics for growth that should be expected of your stations and markets. For example, if streaming is growing at a rate of 10% year-over-year in the USA as a whole, then it might be reasonable to set this as a benchmark: less than 10% year-over-year growth = underperformance.
If you would like more information about this topic, or if you have any questions, please contact your Triton Digital Publisher Manager or Client Success Manager.