Ana Viseu on 16 Aug 2000 17:15:33 -0000 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
[Nettime-bold] architecture and privacy |
An article from the NYTimes on audience measuring techniques that are also relevant for the Web, and for the changes that are starting to be felt in real space architecture due to tech. advances. Best. Ana http://www.nytimes.com/library/financial/columns/081600tv-adcol.html By BERNARD STAMLER NYTimes 2000, August 16 Who Pays Attention to TV and Radio Commercials? Whispercode Knows They are everywhere, cluttering the radio dial and the broadcast and cable television channels as never before: commercials, lots of them, jammed by eager advertisers into what seems to be every available second of programming time. So is anyone actually paying attention? Of course, broadcasters say. But what proof do they have? Sure, there are the ratings, which are provided by services like Nielsen for television and Arbitron for radio and which are supposed to track just how many people are watching or listening to given programs at given times. But the relatively small audience samples and traditional audience-measuring techniques used by these rating services -- hand-written diaries, for example, or manually operated people meters, where participants push buttons when they watch television -- are said by their detractors to be inexact and quaintly old-fashioned, unfairly favoring traditional networks to the detriment of less-established media outlets. The result? Advertisers are clamoring for more precise data, and for the technology that can provide it, says Lee Weinblatt. And Mr. Weinblatt thinks he can oblige. The chief executive of the Pretesting Company, based in Tenafly, N.J., Mr. Weinblatt is no stranger to audience response measurement. For more than a decade, his firm has been testing commercials for clients like Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Johnson & Johnson before they are broadcast, determining whether viewers are likely to watch them or, instead, to switch them off on sight. And now he says that he has developed something that goes even further: a passive system that measures exactly who is in a room or automobile at the precise moment a television or radio commercial is broadcast. The new system is called Whispercode, and unlike the firm's commercial pretesting, which is conducted in specially outfitted locations, it operates entirely within the home or automobile of its participants. The system involves the encoding of commercials with inaudible, identifying signals; test participants need do nothing to activate it. Instead, once transmitted, the encoded signals are automatically detected by a small device worn by participants -- a bracelet, for example, or a keychain -- that will function provided they are in the room or car where the television set or radio emitting the signal is located. The devices are motion sensitive, so a participant could not put one on the table and leave the house. The device then sends a signal to a nearby recording box "the size of a paperback book," according to Mr. Weinblatt, and the box records the fact that the wearer was in the room when the commercial was broadcast. It even records whether a viewer leaves the room in the middle of a commercial. The device later downloads its data via modem to a central computer, which makes it available to advertisers the next morning. Mr. Weinblatt says the system will be in place in a "few thousand" homes by year-end, and in thousands more by the end of 2001. Participants will be chosen at random, but in a manner that is demographically accurate and representative of a cross-section of American households, he said. And they will be compensated for their involvement by various premiums or coupons -- no cash -- relating to products or services like dry cleaning, which are probably not among those that will be advertised and measured via Whispercode.. "With Whispercode, we will finally be providing our clients with a true accounting of where their advertising money is going," he said. Perhaps. Still, despite expressions of interest from various advertisers and a satellite broadcaster, no one has signed up for Whispercode, Mr. Weinblatt acknowledged. And even Whispercode has its limitations; while the system may provide an accurate gauge of a person's physical presence at the time of a broadcast, any couch potato can tell you that that does not necessarily mean that he or she is actually listening or watching. Or, for that matter, whether he or she is even awake. "That is a flaw inherent in any passive monitoring system," commented Anne Elliot, a spokeswoman for Nielsen Media Research, the television rating company. Active survey devices like Nielsen's people meter are therefore better in many ways, she said, because they require participants to actually do something to indicate when they start or stop viewing a show. But people meters also have problems, because they are dependent on the honesty of participants and their willingness to keep pushing buttons, among other things. And so, despite their drawbacks, passive systems still "have enough interest for people like us for us to investigate them, too," Ms. Elliot said. Nielsen Media Research has in fact signed an agreement with Arbitron, the radio survey company, to participate in a test of just such a system, the Arbitron Portable People Meter. Similar to Mr. Weinblatt's Whispercode (the Pretesting Company actually sued Arbitron back in the mid-1990's for patent infringement with regard to the Portable People Meter, but lost the case in 1996), the Arbitron system differs, however, in one significant respect: it encodes entire programs, not commercials. Arbitron began shipping encoding devices to Philadelphia-area radio stations this week. It expects to begin testing in a few months and, if testing is successful, to use the meters eventually to replace the manual paper and pencil diaries now maintained by its radio ratings participants, said an Arbitron spokesman, Thom Mocarsky, who added that "everyone who has seen the system is very impressed." Everyone, that is, except Mr. Weinblatt, who contends that its failure to measure commercials makes the Portable People Meter an inferior device, and that Arbitron and Nielsen are more concerned with preserving an obsolete status quo than with truly measuring audience. Not so, Mr. Mocarsky says. "Our system can encode anything," he said. "But we've decided to base it on programming and not commercials because that is the standard today. It's simply a different technique." ------------------------------------- Tudo vale a pena se a alma nao e pequena. http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~aviseu _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold