The Real Deal On Demographics

Radio stations sales reps love to give advertising clients ratings to show how well they are doing compared to the competition. The system is as old as commercial radio. Usually, the sales rep will give ratings for a demographic group that is the most favourable for their station ("hey Bill, we're the number 2 station for Adults 52-59!"). In reality, there are only 2 age groups that advertisers should care about: 18-49 and 25-54. Think about it.

From 18-49 you:

• go to college
• have your first job
• change jobs
• get into a whole lot of debt
• buy cars
• get a mortgage
• get married
• have kids

From 25-54 you:

• get married
• change jobs
• buy more cars
• sell your house and buy another
• have kids
• send your kids to college & university
• plan for retirement

Those two lists have one very big thing in common: spending money! Advertisers really only care about people who have money (or credit) to spend. The next time a sales rep for a radio station shows you the numbers, ask to see those age groups, either Males, Females, or Adults, to get a sense if you're advertising with the right station.

In Canada, the service that provides ratings to the broadcast industry is the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement- BBM (http://www.bbm.ca/en/home.html), a private company shared by the three groups that actually care about the ratings: radio stations, advertising agencies, and advertisers. Every year, the BBM surveys the Kingston market twice: in the spring and fall, which also coincides with all the great contests stations run (all to get more listeners, listening for longer).

This backgrounder will come in really handy when I start posting the Ratings Rankers, direct from the BBM, when they come out (April and December). In the meantime, I'll post some of the more recent Ratings Rankers from the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007.

Time will tell...keep your radio tuned!