New Measurement Technology

Portable People Meters
New technology for more accurate media measurement.

For those who haven't read all of Jon Gertner's enormous New York Times Magazine piece on the future of communications measurement "Watching What you Watch," here's a synopsis.

Measurement is about to get a lot more accurate. And despite On The Media's "End of the world as we know it" advanced blurbs for their show on the topic, I would argue that, "It's not the end, it's the beginning," to quote a line from Pat Donohue's song. My takeaway from the piece is that Nielsen has finally woken up to the clamoring that I hear every day for more accurate measurement of exactly what people are watching and hearing.

The premise of the piece is that Arbitron has invented something called the Portable People Meter (PPM) that Nielsen has bought into and that is currently being tested in Texas. Unlike traditional Nielsen methodology, that measures what the TV set transmits, the PPM measures what people receive. Which of course is what organizations care about. It tracks, records, and sends back to Nielsen and Arbitron a record of everything the person wearing the PPM is exposed to during the day. It even knows if you hit the loo during the commercial, since it knows when the sound stops.

Now don't get paranoid. Carrying the PPM is a voluntary act, so Arbitron hopes to recruit some 70,000 people to carry them around. The great thing about them is that it is obviously a far more accurate form of measurement, since it tracks not just what you watch sitting in your TV room, but what you listen to at work, in a hotel, on the street, etc. They're even experimenting with adding GPS so you could track billboard viewing.

The interesting (I'm not reading to call it bad) news, is, of course, the huge social implications that this technology has. Nielsen ratings have for years determined what we get to watch on television. The problem is that fewer and fewer people are watching television. More and more are getting their news via the Internet, and their entertainment via their computer and/or their iPod. So as the numbers from the PPM roll in, chances are that advertisers will reallocate their dollars away from television and focus them on other forms of media.

This could be great for word-of-mouth marketing, PR and the Web, if, as we assume, the PPM data shows just how much more influential they are than they now get credit for. However, any major shift in audience will also mean that advertisers will begin shoving products at us via whatever new medium ends up on top. It also, as On The Media correctly pointed out, will mean the end of many stations, outlets and other news and entertainment sources that are currently relying on Nielsen ratings for their revenue stream.

Net net, I welcome PPMs or the equally interesting scheme that ErinMedia is promoting of monitoring cable feeds for improving the accuracy of measurement. And if the road to better measurement is paved with the bodies of mainstream media moguls, all the better.

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