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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.
Benchmark AQH Rating across markets with Spotwise
Spotwise tracks rating performance across competing stations and flags when a rival's rating trajectory accelerates or falls behind market benchmarks.