Author Archive

Leigh Jacobs

Moneyball: One Week to Spring Book

By Leigh Jacobs / March 18, 2024

The spring book starts Thursday, March 28. If you’re among a fortunate few, you’re putting finishing touches on promotional plans, making last-minute tweaks to Selector or Music Master, and looking calmly ahead at your summer vacation plans. Otherwise, you’re still nailing down promotional plans, hoping your music research will be done soon, and arguing with…

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Group of friends dancing at music festival

Moneyball: Two Weeks Until Your Big Party

By Leigh Jacobs / March 11, 2024

You’re throwing a party starting on Thursday, March 28. If you program or manage a radio station in the US, that’s the day that starts the spring book for PPM and Diary markets. You’re probably hoping that something north of one person in six in your market will attend your party every week through late…

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Moneyball: Three Weeks Until Spring Book

By Leigh Jacobs / March 4, 2024

Last week we showed that TikTok is now a part of the Foundational Four platforms for NuVoodoo marketing when demos under 45 are involved. For us that move was based on TikTok’s strong usage numbers among those most likely to participate in the ratings, along with targeting options down to the Zip Code level for…

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Moneyball: A New Option for Ad Placement

By Leigh Jacobs / February 26, 2024

The results of NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Study 23 make it clear, there’s a new ad platform option for stations advertising for the spring book. For years our marketing team has talked about The Foundational Four, meaning the Alphabet duo of Google and YouTube and the Meta duo of Instagram and Facebook. For daily usage among…

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Moneyball: Ready? Spring Book About Five Weeks Away

By Leigh Jacobs / February 19, 2024

The spring book starts in about five weeks as you’re likely to be reading this. If you’re planning a spring promotion you still have time to finalize contest plans and on-air promotional tactics – but time is getting tight if you’re planning to support your promotion with off-air paid advertising. If you’re in a diary…

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Moneyball: The Devil’s in the Details (i.e., the Data)

By Leigh Jacobs / February 12, 2024

The latest NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Study shows interesting shifts in the percentages who pay attention to ads in various channels. That’s important information if you’re planning a marketing program for the spring ratings starting in about six weeks. The table below shows 17 marketing channels tracked from our prior study conducted last summer. One big…

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Moneyball: How Much Contest Cash Do You NEED?

By Leigh Jacobs / February 5, 2024

The news that America’s most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, did not see his shadow arrived as this is being written – predicting an early spring. At the same time, America’s 146th most famous groundhog, Nielsen Ned, also failed to see his shadow, predicting that the spring ratings would start on March 28 – about seven…

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Moneyball: Fishing Where the Fish Are, Sort Of …

By Leigh Jacobs / January 29, 2024

We’re digging through the data collected from over 3,200 14-54s nationwide in our latest NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Study as we prepare to give clients first looks at the complete data before we release it more widely. It’s our way of giving back to a business we love and a future we’re very much invested in…

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Moneyball: A New Study Coming with New Information

By Leigh Jacobs / January 22, 2024

The 23rd in our series of twice-annual Ratings Prospects Studies has just finished fielding. In the weeks ahead we’ll be sharing the latest results first with clients and then more widely across the industry. While we track results on some points we’ve asked before, first party data is a major focus of this new study. We’ll…

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Moneyball: Options for Decision-Making

By Leigh Jacobs / January 15, 2024

The spring ratings period starts in about 10 weeks. As we noted last week, we’re still at the point where we feel we have plenty of time to make programming tweaks, get promotional plans made, and marketing plans set. Sometimes, however, changes in the ratings become wrinkles in those plans. Is that decline in a…

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