Starting next week, media agencies receiving AirCheck reports from AudioNET will be able to see at a glance, the error rates for each radio station, for each campaign.

AudioNET CEO Dave Cox says the extra information will be very useful for account managers.

“Each summary report is laid out to show the stations booked, how many spots were booked, how many spots were missed, were out of day part, or if incorrect key numbers ran….and a column on the far right tallies up the error rate for each station.

“Most campaigns are pretty well executed and hover around the average 5% mark. Every now and then something extraordinary goes wrong – like recently when one station returned a 100% error rate. Naturally we picked it up straight away – we didn’t make the agency wait until the end of the month to let them know something was wrong.”

Agencies could do the calculations themselves, but it’s quicker and more accurate to get the auditing software to do it. “Every minute we save agency staff is more time they have for their clients,” says Cox.

Media agencies are now getting very sophisticated in their use of AirCheck data according to Cox. “For example one agency targets specific types of placement each month. One month they may pay close attention to position in break for all their clients. Another month it may be how well stations manage a BMAD spread.”

AudioNET’s interface with the AirCheck data is backed up by expert knowledge of radio programming and ad scheduling.

A recent example of how the system can be used came when a station had to put up a white flag on a ‘first in break’ premium. The station argued the client was first in the ad break, even though there was a station promo running immediately before it. Because AirCheck lets the agency hear the spots, it was obvious the station promo was pushing a competitor’s products.

AirCheck data proved that even though the station had scheduled a ‘promo’ not an ‘ad’ the client who’d paid a premium to be ‘first in break’ was not getting what they’d paid for.