International media and market research firm, Arbitron, has bought US radio audience research bureau, RADAR, for $25 million from its parent company, Statistical Research Inc.
RADAR (Radio’s All Dimensions Audience Research) is the US equivalent of the UK’s RAJAR survey. If offers the US a national radio ratings service that measures audiences to radio commercials aired on 29 radio networks operated by ABC, American Urban Radio Networks, Premiere, and Westwood One. It produces its estimates using a 12-month, 12,000 person telephone survey in combination with the industry-standard commercial clearance system.
“RADAR has established itself as the ‘gold standard’ for network radio audience measurement services,” said David Lapovsky, executive vice president, Worldwide Research, at Arbitron. “National advertisers are willing to pay a higher cost per rating point for commercials run on RADAR-rated networks in part because the audience estimates are based on the commercial clearance system that is an integral part of the service.”
Arbitron initially intends to keep the RADAR services as they are currently run, but also hopes to enhance its research through further collaboration with networks, agencies and advertisers.
Arbitron surveys more than 1.3 million radio listeners in more than 3,500 counties across the US in the course of its local market radio ratings surveys in 286 markets throughout the year. “We plan to use a subset of our local market diaries to increase dramatically the sample size for the RADAR network survey,” added Lapovsky. “By combining our two services, Arbitron can provide the industry [with] what would have been economically impractical for RADAR to provide on its own – network audience estimates of greater utility and flexibility.”
