One of the bonuses of my job is that I occasionally get the opportunity talk with tech people who are on the cutting edge of technology.
Recently, RedTech got a briefing with Juan Galdamez, senior director, broadcast strategy and business development at Xperi, about its DTS AutoStage radio listenership data collection platform.
Version 2 of its Broadcaster Portal has been released in the United States market for its maiden voyage or think of it as the shakedown cruise.
My key takeaway is that there is a slowly building revolution in the ability of broadcasters (and others) to understand what radio listeners are listening to in the car, when and where they are listening to it and for how long.
That may sound run-of-the-mill. After all, we have ratings and listenership studies, right?
The difference with DTS AutoStage is that its real-time IP connection makes it essentially two-way. Traditional broadcasting is one-way and the data on exactly who is listening fairly vague and built on extrapolations from a very small sample set of the prospective listenership, often determined long after broadcast.
Now with DTS AutoStage working with the broadcast signal, listener location, time and duration details become available to participating broadcasters much quicker. Xperi only provides anonymized data and only to the particular owner or staff for that station.
The company has the top 250 markets in the U.S. covered with tens and hundreds of thousands cars cranking out consumption data in each particular market when the radio gets turned on. There are millions of participating vehicles 9 million cars in the U.S. and several million more in other countries globally, totaling 13 million vehicles. All stations get covered. This level of granularity from vehicles broadcast consumption is unheard of (pun intended). The opportunities in radio marketing and ads are almost certain to undergo a sea change.
In many ways this is identical to what is happening with internet browsers and the usage/marketing data they can provide. That might flash some warning lights but, as noted above, DTS AutoStage is not collecting personal data, only listening activity is transmitted. There are no cookies or their crumbs.
Currently Version 2 is being polished with expansion to other national markets in the near future.
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