Methodology
How M.A.D. Radio is measured
Every advertiser report is built from first-party listening events recorded by the M.A.D. Radio player. Report generation date: this page reflects methodology as of 2026-11-05; every exported report shows its own generation date and time.
Definitions
- Website visitor
- One anonymous browser that opened any page on music.madinthefield.com during the period.
- Radio player open
- A visit to the M.A.D. Radio page.
- Play click
- A listener pressed Play. Clicks that never produce sound are reported as failed stream attempts and excluded from all listening numbers.
- Stream start / session
- Audio actually began playing. One session runs from pressing Play until the listener stops or leaves. Each session is counted once.
- Verified unique listener
- A distinct anonymous browser ID with at least one stream start.
- Qualified listen
- 30 or more seconds of a single song heard in one session. Qualified listeners are unique listeners with at least one qualified listen.
- Listening hours
- The sum of listening heartbeats — sent every 30 seconds of actual playback, never while paused.
- Average / median duration
- Mean and middle value of listening time per session.
- Peak concurrent listeners
- The most sessions sending heartbeats in any 10-minute window.
- New vs returning
- New = the browser's first ever M.A.D. Radio session; returning = it has listened before.
- Retention
- Share of the period's listeners who listened on two or more separate days.
- Geography & device
- Country and region come from the network edge's location lookup; device type comes from the browser. Neither the IP address nor the full browser string is stored.
- Traffic source
- Campaign tag (utm_source), QR code, or the referring site type: search, social, referral or direct.
- Days & times
- Session start times in Eastern Time (New York).
- Listener actions
- Pauses, resumes, stops, skips, songs completed, artist-profile clicks and music-purchase clicks.
- Ad impression
- An ad spot that actually started playing. Quartiles (25/50/75%) and completions follow actual playback.
- Reach & frequency
- Reach = unique listeners who heard a campaign's spot; frequency = impressions ÷ reach.
- Banner view / click / QR scan
- Sponsor name shown on the player while its spot airs; tracked click-throughs; scans of the campaign's QR link.
- Leads & purchases
- Totals reported by the advertiser and entered by M.A.D., with revenue where supplied (attributable revenue).
- Cost metrics
- CPM = spend ÷ impressions × 1,000; CPC = spend ÷ (clicks + QR scans); CPA = spend ÷ (leads + purchases); ROAS = revenue ÷ spend; CTR = (clicks + QR scans) ÷ impressions.
Filters
- Bots and automated tools (crawlers, headless browsers, scripts) are identified by browser signature and excluded.
- Internal traffic — the team's editor preview and test environments — is excluded.
- Preloads never count: events are only recorded once audio is actually audible.
- Duplicate deliveries of the same event (network retries) are discarded by a unique event ID.
- Failed stream attempts (Play pressed, no audio) are excluded from listeners, sessions and hours, and reported separately.
- Comparisons use the immediately preceding period of equal length.
Data sources
- M.A.D. Radio player events (play, stream start, heartbeats, track, ad and action events).
- The M.A.D. catalog for song genre and artist names.
- QR-code redirect logs and advertiser-reported leads and sales.
Privacy protections
- Listeners are identified only by a random ID stored in their own browser; clearing browser data resets it.
- No names, emails, account details or IP addresses are collected with listening events.
- Location is limited to country and region; device is limited to a broad category.
- Advertisers receive aggregate totals only — never individual listener records.