people meters, how accurate?

[hypwr]

At the radio gathering last night several of us got into a discussion about the new rating system. There seems to be alot of concern about accuracy.  A talk station CE showed me the holes in the data stream which could effect the numbers.

Any thoughts?

[kenhawk1160]

I think I need to understand more clearly how it's supposed to work.  In Butler, I don't think we ever showed up in the Pittsburgh market's book, though we were rated #1 locally before Butler County was part of the Pittsburgh market.  Now we do show up in the Pittsburgh ratings.  While that's good for us, I'm still a little skeptical.  I'd like to say ratings doesn't matter, but when you're trying to get agency buys (everyone is using an agency these days, even the smaller businesses), that's all they want to see.  But in the big scheme of things, we've been more reputation-driven than ratings-driven.