• by August 2, 2004

NORTHERN DISCLOSURE -- Canada's decision to begin using portable people meters as the official TV and radio currency for two of its largest markets - Quebec and Montreal - this fall has been lauded by a number of important people South of it's borders, including a couple of U.S. lawmakers. But the move is not without its northern detractors either. Unlike the United States, where media companies have been gumming up the works for advancing the rollout of local people meters or the next market trial of Arbitron's PPM system, it is the ad industry that is telling the Canadian TV and radio marketplace to cool its heels. And the reasons being cited by the Association of Canadian Advertisers - Canada's equivalent of America's Association of National Advertisers - are some of the very same issues that would impact U.S. advertisers if such a system were initiated here. Curiously, big American marketers have yet to raise such issues. Instead, it has been media companies like Infinity Broadcasting, Cox Radio, and Radio One - that have been stalling the PPM process, even though some advertisers believe it will inflate the value of broadcast rating currency.

Those, in fact, are some of the key issues raised by Bob Reaume, vice president of policy and research at the ACA, in a recent communiqué sent to the Canadian ad industry. While lauding many aspects of the PPM - especially its electronic measurement capabilities - and noting that the ACA is not "unconditionally opposed to this system," Reaume rattled off nine potential pitfalls of the system, including:

* How it defines viewing
* How it credits in-home versus out-of-home tuning
* It's potential for crediting incidental or accidental unintended tuning
* It's spectral "richness or sparseness"
* Docking concerns
* Response rates
* Kids compliance
* International testing
* Confidence

Many of these issues have been raised during the U.S. tests - mainly by broadcasters and by the ratings services testing them, Arbitron and its erstwhile partner Nielsen - and one key point appears to have been overcome. Arbitron and Nielsen recently announced a breakthrough in the PPM's response rates, noting that it now is about as good as Nielsen's conventional people meter system in the United States

Other issues linger, but have not yet been a major stumbling block from the U.S. ad industry's perspective, even though their Canadian counterparts now claim the PPM essentially will redefine TV ratings from the current standard of "opportunity to see" to a "proxy for opportunity to hear." Citing the opinion of none other than Erwin Ephron, Reaume asserted that this redefinition of "viewing" is "quite acceptable to broadcasters, but is decidedly unacceptable to advertisers." He also called it a "step backwards" for the ad industry, not forwards.

Most of the other criticisms Reaume lobbed at the PPM are mainly technical and seemingly ones that could be worked out over time, once you get past the notion that the system will alter the fundamental way the ad industry looks at TV viewing. Then again, that might be the real reason why radio broadcasters south of Canada's borders are so adamantly opposed to the PPM. Not because it will hurt radio's audience estimates per se, but because it might hyper inflate the relative value of TV's.

THE RIFF'S GONE ON VACATION -- This will be the only Real Media Riffs column this week, while we take a brief summer hiatus. The Riff will be back on Monday, Aug. 9.