Arbitron adds five new PPM markets

The new markets are Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, St Louis, Denver-Boulder, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. The firm said that it plans to commercialise the service in another nine markets at the end of the year.

Those will be Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Salt Lake City-Ogden-Provo, San Antonio, Kansas City and Las Vegas.

Arbitron’s technology is still under scrutiny from minority-owned radio broadcasters, who claim that their audiences are under-represented in the PPM sample, leading to lower ratings and falling ad revenues.