Primedia Broadcasting has called out Telmar over a “serious error” in reporting the radio planning programme (RPB) data for its biggest radio station, 947. This mistake has materially impacted negatively on the performance of the station on all RBP runs done using the latest audience figures, the broadcaster said in a statement.
“Clearly we are very disturbed by the error as this data is widely used in agencies to guide clients in making decisions as to whether, where and how to place advertising” said Malani van Huyssteen, head of sales for Primedia Broadcasting.
“We will take this up further with Telmar as the credibility of data is paramount, particularly in such a fast-paced, analytics-based industry, in which we trust the information we are given,” she said.
Telmar provides tools to the advertising and marketing industry for deciding whether and how to place advertising. Telmar’s numerous applications produce various analyses of audience and rates and the January-June 2015 (RAMS Release 2015/2) data for their RBP radio campaign planning application, is incorrect.
The error has resulted in the station’s cost-per-thousand (CPT) appearing to be double the actual cost-per-thousand for the station. This is as a result of the impacts and ratings for the station being incorrectly half of what they should be. Other figures which are affected by this error include the “projected reach”, the “reach percentage” and “average frequency” of any campaign planned on the incorrect numbers, all of which are considerably lower than they should be according to the latest RAMS release.
“We would like to apologise for the confusion this causes, and reassure our advertisers and their agencies that 947 remains a high-performance advertising vehicle on which they can generate response,” said Van Huyssteen.
Primedia Broadcasting understands that Telmar is releasing a fix for this issue and has asked clients to urgently contact Telmar for a link to the corrected data file, and rerun any schedules that they might have created for the station using the 2015/2 September release. The broadcaster is aware of only this issue on this station.
Van Huysteen added, “We would also encourage you to contact us directly to assist you with the process of planning on any of our stations should you be confused about the impact this could have on a media decision”.
