Audience Measurement
AQH Rating
AQH Persons expressed as a mathematical percentage of the total measured demographic population in a specific geographic market.
What is AQH Rating?
AQH Rating converts the raw AQH Persons number into a percentage by dividing it by the total population of the demographic being measured. If 4,000 people aged 25–54 tune into a station during morning drive and the metro has a 25–54 population of 400,000, the station holds a 1.0 AQH Rating. Expressing audience as a share of population — rather than a raw number — lets media buyers compare stations across markets of wildly different sizes.
Agencies rely on AQH Rating because budgets are planned in rating points, not headcounts. Gross Rating Points are simply AQH Rating multiplied by the number of spots. A buyer can therefore normalize a Riga buy against a Berlin buy without worrying that the absolute listener counts are incomparable.
Why it matters
Allows media buyers to compare the relative market penetration of a station against total market potential, normalizing data across cities of varying sizes.
Related terms
- AQH (Average Quarter-Hour Persons)— The average number of individuals tuning into a station for at least five consecutive minutes within a specific 15-minute interval.
- Audience Composition— The demographic, psychographic, or socioeconomic breakdown of a station's listener base, usually expressed in percentages.
- Audience Turnover— The calculated ratio of a station's cumulative audience (Cume) compared to its Average Quarter-Hour (AQH) audience.
- Average Audience— The estimated number of people listening to a radio station or viewing a television program during any given minute of the broadcast.