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Hispanic Marketing Communication Blog

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Arbitron's portable people validity challenged

Well, things are really heating up between the Hispanic marketing industry and Arbitron over its highly-criticized Portable People Meter methodology.

The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies and the PPM Coalition, a group of minority radio broadcasters, filed a petition with the FCC requesting an investigation into the accuracy of the PPM.

According to an article in AdWeek, Arbitron has two portable people meter markets in Houston and Philadelphia and plans to expand to eight markets by the end of the year.

This follows several months of meetings between the parties. Basically, minority broadcasters, fear lower ratings and dwindling ad dollars because of how Arbitron represents the Hispanic audience sample.

"It could have a devastating impact on the industry, wiping out nearly half of the minority broadcasters," the group said in a statement. Arbitron countered that the PPM is more accurate than the diary and that the petitioning groups have failed to acknowledge improvements in the quality of Arbitron's minority samples. Arbitron said: "Our PPM samples are designed to effectively represent the diversity of the African-American and Spanish-language radio marketplace and of all the markets we measure in terms of age, sex, race, ethnicity and Spanish-language preference."

Arbitron does not believe that the FCC has jurisdiction over the company or its operations and assets and consequently lacks the authority to commence an investigation.

Get the popcorn ready, this could get more heated than the presidential elections!

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

New leadership takes over at AHAA

The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies announced Jose Lopez-Varela as its new leader today.

He takes over for Jackie Bird. According to the release, during Bird's tenure, AHAA:
-- Tipped the 100-member agency mark and revised the strategic initiatives outlined two years earlier by the Board of Directors.
-- Implemented the first annual AHAA salary survey specific to Hispanic marketing agencies;
-- Created a partnership with Simmons Research and conducting qualitative and quantitative research supporting the Latino Identity project
-- Published, with AdAge, a magazine supplement on the Hispanic advertising industry and AHAA
-- Met with legislators to gain support for unbundling government contracts
-- Executed a partnership with Nielsen to analyze what advertisers are spending in the Hispanic market versus the general market and will be releasing the results in May
-- Planned a re-design the AHAA Web site.

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