March 14, 2006, 10:31PM Arbitron comes up with new way to track radio listeners 'People meters' will do away with paper diaries
By MIKE MCDANIEL Houston Chronicle http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/3723471.html Arbitron Inc., the national radio ratings service, said Tuesday that it will launch "people meters" an electronic audience measurement system nationally in July, beginning in Houston. Going from paper to electronic measurement should mean a significant rise in tabulating accurate listenership and could breathe fresh life into the radio advertising market. Pierre Bouvard, Arbitron president of sales and marketing, said the conversion will mean that radio will no longer lag behind other media (like television) in providing "credible audience measurement." It should also mean that radio will now be seen as a "reach" medium, capturing the attention of large portions of the population, and that advertisers who never looked at radio as a viable option will consider it. Currently, the radio audience relies on paper diaries, which require listeners to write down what they've been exposed to over the week. But because of faulty listener memories, the diaries have proved inaccurate. Arbitron will soon rely on the people meter, a cell-phone-size device that the listener wears. When a listener has the radio on, the meter picks up an embedded signal transmitted over the station that Arbitron recognizes by program and time. Arbitron says the measurement is 50 percent more accurate than people's memories. The meter also tracks, through a motion detector and an at-home hub, whether a listener is at home and wearing the device. The device has been tested here since July, which is why Houston will be the first market to make official use of it. Philadelphia will be next, followed by New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The new service is more expensive than the paper system, primarily because of increased listener participation and the cost of the meters. The people meter is also capable of tracking time-shifted listening and podcasts and could be used by television stations that wish to monitor use of digital video recorders or otherwise complement their reports from Nielsen Media Research. But Arbitron is not looking to compete with Nielsen in the television ratings business. "The market generally likes one currency, one number to negotiate with," Bouvard said. "Our notion is (the meter) would be a complement to the Nielsen currency." ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
