Software Guide What s New in Version 9.8?

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1 MRC Accreditation ACT 1 is pleased to announce that we have successfully maintained our MRC accreditation status based on the latest audit process that began in June 2017 and was finalized in June Planner: Major enhancements The ACT 1 Planner application, which greatly facilitates the buying and selling process for network radio continues to evolve. Below is a summary of the major enhancements to Planner introduced with version 9.8: Support for new impression-based proposals. This type of proposal pertains to network programs that don t use traditional station lineups, such as streaming and podcasts. With impression-based proposals, the user enters weekly Gross Impressions directly into the buy (instead of spots), with costs determined by CPM (or CPP) rather than by spot cost. Proposal differences: An impression-based proposal may refer to only one demo (the target demo). Because of this (and other differences), Planner now has a separate Proposal editor for creating and managing impression-based proposals. Also, CSV files for impression-based proposals are structured a bit differently. Automatic conversion: If an existing Planner document contains an impression-based proposal that was previously implemented the old way (by setting all of its lineups to n/a ), it will be automatically converted to this new type of impression-based proposal. The new method is much better than the old method since it is easier to view and it doesn t cause additional daypart lines to be created during the revision process. Added three new options that allow for the display of data with greater precision: (1) Show costs down to the penny, (2) show Gross Impressions (000) with 1 decimal place (i.e. hundreds), and (3) show CPM with 6 decimal places (mainly for impression-based proposals). For proposals that use lineups with stored spots, users enter spot factors instead of spots. Previously, these spot factors were not counted toward spot totals, but now each non-zero spot factor counts as one spot. Also, a new option (under the Columns button) allows spot factors to be hidden such that a 0 or 1 is displayed instead of the actual factor. Using the Hyphen if 0 spots option will now cause all values for the given week to be replaced with a hyphen if there are zero spots. (Previously, only the spots value was replaced.) When using Sun-Sat weeks, we now sort dayparts such that Sunday dayparts appear first. To view the Planner Software Guide & Manual, please see: ACT 1 Systems, Inc. --- Version 9.8 8/30/ Phone: (818) Fax: (818)

2 Affiliate System: Summary audience computed with greater precision Previously, the audience estimates shown on summary pages were calculated by summing the displayed market level estimates which had been rounded to the nearest 100. In version 9.8, summary audience values are now calculated by summing the unrounded market estimates, and not rounding to the nearest 100 until displayed. This change was made to carry greater precision to the summary-level estimates, which are used by traffic systems (such as Counterpoint ) to produce proposal audience estimates. This greater precision will allow the proposal audience estimates to more closely match the results produced when the proposal is transferred to Affiliate System reports. Summary-level ratings are computed by dividing these rounded summary audience estimates by the population. The method of carrying full precision to the summary level also agrees with the way Tapscan computes multi-market estimates when using National data. Modified methodology to derive Cume estimates for irregular dayparts A daypart may have any selection of days and any selection of hours within those days. Almost all dayparts used in practice are regular dayparts where each selected day includes the same set of selected hours. ACT 1 has methods for deriving Cume estimates for all types of regular dayparts. However, it is possible to specify an irregular daypart that has missing hours for some days. For example, consider the daypart MW 6a-8a+WTh 8a-9a, which has a total of 8 (6+2) hours. You could also think of this 8-hour daypart as follows: Start with its smallest encompassing regular daypart, MTh 6a-9a, which has 12 hours. Remove the four missing hours (Thu 6a, Thu 7a, Mon 8a, and Tue 8a), leaving the 8 hours. To derive a Cume estimate for this sort of irregular daypart, ACT 1 first uses its standard methods to derive the Cume estimate for the smallest encompassing regular daypart (MTh 6a-9a in this example), and then it reduces that estimate by applying a penalty factor, to account for the missing hours (4 in this example). Previously, this penalty factor method used a fairly simple model to determine the appropriate reduction factor, but we discovered cases where this old model produced unsatisfactory results. For version 9.8, we have developed a newer and more sophisticated model based on new respondent-level data studies. Our analysis confirms that the new model generally works much better than the old one. This updated methodology affects both Research and Affiliate System. For more information, please see the Methodology Guide (page 24). Affiliate System: Network Ranker New option to combine all lineups When this option is in effect, Network Ranker will treat all of the selected lineups as if they were combined into one single lineup (and thus displayed in a single column). This may be controlled with a new Combine lineups checkbox on the report dialog bar or on the Report Options dialog. ACT 1 Systems, Inc. --- Version 9.8 8/30/ Phone: (818) Fax: (818)

3 Affiliate System: Network Ranker New Station Universe option Normally, each station s rank is determined by comparing its audience with the audience of every other station in its market. However, there are cases where it is desirable to have them ranked based on a more specific subset of stations. This is possible in version 9.8 by using the new Station Universe feature. It is simple: (1) In Lineup Manager, create your subset lineup that represents all stations that you want to include, perhaps using the Create Generated Lineup feature. (2) In Network Ranker, select this subset lineup as the Station Universe. This will cause the report to be produced as if the stations in your subset lineup are the only stations that exist. This means that if your lineups include a station that is not in your station universe, it will be discarded The station universe lineup may be specified on the Report Options dialog or on the dialog bar. It will remember the most recent station universe lineups that you have selected before, to make it easy to reuse those same lineups. Of course, you can always switch back to using all stations. Affiliate System: Network Ranker New Gross Impression Report option Previously, the Network Ranker reported only AQH and/or Cume audience values. With version 9.8, it now also has an option to report Gross Impressions, which means that spots may now be entered in the Lineup Input dialog or transferred from other reports or from Planner. When the Gross Impressions option is used, there are several new features and columns that become available. Each station will still be ranked within its home market based on its AQH audience, but it will also show the number of Gross Impressions (and GRPs) it contributes to the buy. It will also show the number of spots and repeats for each station. Each market will have a total line that shows the total GIs for the market, and each station will show what percentage of the total GI was contributed by that station. The total line will reflect the market total for each lineup (if lineups are not combined) or the entire market (if lineups are combined). A net adjustment percentage column may be shown to account for cases where the displayed AQH used for station ranking is different from the AQH contributed to the buy (due to clearance percentages or adjustment factors). The display of the new GI-related columns may be controlled using the new GI Report Columns button on the dialog bar or Report Options dialog. A new sort option allows the report to be sorted by Gross Impressions. If rank totals are used (e.g. Rk 1-10, Rk 11-20, etc.) with a GI report, then there are more features: A Unique Stations column that shows the number of unique stations (i.e. not counting repeats) within each rank total. An option to show unique station summaries for each rank total. If shown, there will be one line for each unique station in the rank total, and it will show the total spots, repeats, GIs, GRPs, and percent of total GRP contributed by that station. ACT 1 Systems, Inc. --- Version 9.8 8/30/ Phone: (818) Fax: (818)

4 Affiliate System: Network Ranker Control of rank totals from dialog bar A new Rank Totals button provides three options that determine how rank totals are displayed: 1. Whether they are displayed at the market level or only the summary level, if at all. 2. Whether the individual station/daypart lines should be hidden (i.e. show only rank totals at the market level). 3. Whether the rank total station summaries should be displayed or not (GI report only). Affiliate System: New option to export summary ratings with two decimal accuracy Normally, all ratings are displayed with one decimal place. In version 9.8, the Setup Options dialog offers an option to export summary-level ratings with two decimal places. This option is useful in cases where summary ratings are processed downstream by another system and the extra precision yields better results. For example, a traffic system may import ratings exported from the Demo Summary report, and having two digits allows the traffic system to compute more accurate audience estimates in the proposals it generates. Affiliate System: Minor bug fixes Fixed a problem with the display of spots on Overview page when zero spots were assigned (it would report various spots instead of 0 spots ). Fixed a problem with the Trend Report tabular export in cases where the market was not active for the first book being trended. Fixed a problem where the Trend report sometimes displayed too few lines on a page. Fixed a problem where importing a lineup schedule from a Planner document sometimes changed the report s option to not compute unreported audience. Fixed a paging problem that occurred in some reports when very large lineups were used (Lineup Analysis report, MSL report, and Placement report). Lineup Manager: Revamped the Lineup Compare & Update report Major changes have been made to the Lineup Compare & Update report, as follows: The report output has a more tabular structure, making it easier to work with if exported. There are no longer two modes (update mode vs. compare mode). The primary and secondary schedule information is now shown side-by-side. A problem related to the comparison of clearances has been fixed. ACT 1 Systems, Inc. --- Version 9.8 8/30/ Phone: (818) Fax: (818)

5 Lineup Manager: Enhancements to Group Management dialog The Group Management dialog has a new Operations button with the following new features: Export This will export the list of lineups in the currently selected group into a text file. Import - This will import a list of lineup codes from a text file and place them into the currently selected group (with option to either preserve or replace its existing lineups). Group Comparison report This feature will produce a report based on the selection of two or more groups. The report will show lineups going down, and groups going across, and it will make it easy to see how the groups overlap in terms of the lineups they reference. This report may be exported as a CSV file. Lineup Manager: Improved import of stored spot prices in lineups The following improvements have been made related to stored spot prices in lineups: When importing lineups from a text file, the prices may include pennies. The Multi-Lineup Import dialog Custom method now allows a price field to be specified. Lineup Manager: New handling of imported and exported stored spots By default, lineups that do not have stored spots are considered to have one spot per station. This is now reflected in the way lineups are imported and exported. When importing a lineup with stored spots: If we see that every station has a spot value of 1, we discard the stored spot values so that the default of 1 spot will be used instead. When exporting a lineup without stored spots: The export file will show that each station has a stored spot value of 1 (which is its default value). This new policy prevents a lineup from being flagged as having stored spots when it really was not intended to have stored spots, thus avoiding problems with using these lineups in Planner. All Applications: Fixed a scrolling problem for very large reports When a displayed report page is very lengthy, the scrollbars would sometimes not work properly, causing the display to jump when attempting to scroll near the bottom of the page. This is fixed. Click here to see more details on these new Planner features or to view the most current Planner Software Guide & Manual. Click here to see What s New for current and historical versions. ACT 1 Systems, Inc. --- Version 9.8 8/30/ Phone: (818) Fax: (818)