For years, multicultural radio stations have expressed challenges in the accuracy of ratings delivered by Nielsen Audio and, before that, Arbitron. Are Hispanics less likely to wear a PPM device, because of workplace limitations or, in more recent years, a fear of monitoring? What about diary-based measurement and in-language outreach to Asian Americans, let alone Spanish-preferred households?
Nielsen has done much over the years to address these concerns. Now, Eastlan Ratings thinks it has a solution, thanks to a new partnership forged with a former Katz Media executive who is also a co-founder of Triton Digital.
Collaborative efforts between Eastlan and Mike Agovino, presently CEO of Digital Audio Venture firm JaxLaw Inc. and President/CEO of independent podcast studio and consultancy Workhouse Connect, have given birth to a new product offering from Bellevue, Wash.-based Eastlan.
It’s being called “E-Plus,” and it is specifically designed “to improve measurement accuracy in large multicultural radio markets.”
How so? E-plus, said Eastlan President Mike Gould, ”will significantly expand sample sizes from current Nielsen panels while also employing a single respondent per household model to ensure proportionate inclusion of multicultural consumers.”
The first E-Plus analysis is currently in process for the Los Angeles market. The results will likely be shared in an advertiser/agency webinar featuring Gould and Agovino, scheduled for August.
What is the impetus for E-Plus?
“As the country and individual markets have diversified, legacy measurement methods have failed to keep pace,” Agovino said. “Years later we see the impact of this complacency; underrepresentation of certain cultures and sub-cultures in the sample base, which leads to results that significantly distort the listening habits of non-English dominant populations.”
Agovino is confident that E-Plus “will overcome these challenges and gain traction as a service that empowers advertisers and their agencies with more accurate multicultural listener data and a more accurate holistic view of markets with large non-English populations.”
While Hispanics have seen an increase in bilingual and English-preferred homes over the years, a significant percentage of households remains Spanish-preferred. Additionally, Los Angeles is home to a large population of Armenians, Persians, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese and Hmong (largely from Laos).
Speaking of the partnership, Gould said, “We engaged Mike to work with us to explore growth opportunities in the market and collectively we’ve embraced a vision around democratizing measurement in multi-cultural markets.”
He added that the effort is being done “with no financial support or influence from outside media companies.”
He shifted to the President/COO role at Clear Channel Radio Sales in 2000, staying through 2004.
In June 2005, Agovino helped launch Triton Digital, today Triton — wholly owned by The E.W. Scripps Co. Agovino was Triton Digital’s COO, and held the role for a decade.
In April 2015, he teamed up with Norm Pattiz to serve as Exec. Vice Chairman of Courtside Entertainment/PodcastOne.
Since 2016, he’s focused his energies on podcast development studio Workhouse Connect, which produces shows like POPS! The Louis Armstrong Story and Fame Is A Bitch with AJ Benza.
Privately held Eastlan was launched 20 years ago and offers ratings data for 90 small markets across the U.S. In March, Eastlan “replaced” Nielsen Audio ratings in the Merced, Calif., market.
