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long march to Wilmington
Not so simple challenge to measure multi-media
By David Everitt
Arbitron is telling us that its Portable People Meter is the audience measuring device of the future. As a matter of fact, the PPM may have been a bit too futuristic when tested in England two years ago.
Arbitron went there to win a national ratings contract and ended up losing out to an antiquated diary system. But the company believes it came out of the test with valuable experience that could help start the future here in the U.S.
To refresh your memory, the PPM is a passive system –a mostly passive system, to be more exact–that requires people to carry a small, clip-on meter that picks up signals from both radio and TV, as well as the internet.
At the end of each day, consumers have to insert the meter into a small docking station in their homes, and this in turn transmits the day’s viewing and listening information to Arbitron.
The company is taking the lessons learned from the Manchester, England test and is applying them to its current American trial in Wilmington, Del.
Arbitron testers will focus on acclimating consumers to the system and incorporating a new data-sorting system to handle the more complex American media market.
If all goes well, use of the PPM will expand to the greater Philadelphia area by the end of the year and to other markets by 2003.
What made this device possible in the first place were a series of scholarly studies and technical advances made by the cell phone industry.
When Arbitron first began contemplating a device that could measure both radio and TV, researchers concluded early on that audio encoding was the key.
Sound, after all, was the common denominator between the two media. But the challenge was "how do you put in a code into the broadcasts that would not disrupt the broadcast and would not be detectable to the consumer," says Ron Kolessar, Arbitron’s director of technology.
The solution, Kolessar says, emerged out of some fortuitous timing.
While Arbitron cast about for a way to create an effective audio code in the late Eighties and early Nineties, a number of university researchers published studies on something called psycho-acoustic masking.
Basically, these studies dealt with the idea that when the human ear is exposed to certain pairs of sounds, it will react to only one of the audio signals.
Arbitron researchers decided to use the masked, inaudible sound as their code.
"We came up with a method that would take advantage of the limitations of the human ear," Kolessar says.
Around the same time, the cell-phone industry came up with a form of circuitry to create a new digital signal processor. The processor allowed Arbitron to put the audio-masking theory into practice.
"Because of that advance that they made," Kolessar says, "we could use a new technology without having to pay for custom circuitry."
The pursuit of a national ratings contract was one reason Arbitron conducted its last PPM test in England. Another reason had to do with the relative simplicity of the Manchester market.
"We had fewer stations to encode in order to cover the Manchester market than we would have had in the U.S.," says Bob Patchen, Arbitron’s vice president of research standards and practices.
"In Manchester we needed to encode 20 radio and TV stations combined. In a U.S. market of comparable size, we would have had to place 50 to 100 encoders."
According to Patchen, Arbitron hoped the Manchester test would answer three basic questions: One, will broadcasters agree to be encoded? Two, when encoded, would the technology work properly? And three, would the public cooperate, would they wear the meter during the day and dock it at night?
The answer to the first question, according to Patchen, was encouraging.
"All the commercial radio, TV and cable channels that we approached agreed to be encoded. Only the BBC Radio networks did not."
Patchen adds, "Second, the encoders did work effectively, and third, the public cooperated well. They carried the meter at a median of 14 hours a day and generally docked them after 11 at night."
Aside from receiving and transmitting the coded data, a key part of the technology concerns detecting if the meter is in motion.
This tells Arbitron whether the meter is being carried around or whether it’s just lying on a coffee table or stashed away in a kitchen drawer. Patchen reports that Arbitron was able to collect motion data as well.
The success of the Manchester test, though, does not automatically ensure that the PPM is ready for America.
"The most important thing about the Wilmington test is that it will allow us to measure in a U.S. media environment, which is more complicated," Patchen says.
For one thing, cable TV is a much greater presence in the U.S. For another, Arbitron expects the Wilmington trial will test at least one internet outlet as well.
Another issue concerns the American public.
"Will the American public cooperate as well as the British public? We have to take into account certain cultural differences," Patchen says.
This seems like it might be critical, this cultural thing.
Brits, after all, have a queue culture. They’re so cooperative they’ll stand in line for anything.
Americans, on the other hand, will shoot somebody for cutting them off on the freeway. Kind of a different mind-set.
In the Wilmington test, Arbitron will also have a chance to try out a more sophisticated data reporting system that sorts through the information automatically. In Manchester, technicians had to be on hand to work the computers.
If Arbitron works out the various adaptations to the American market, the PPM has the potential to make multimedia buying more comprehensive and scientific, according to Linda Dupree, Arbitron's vice president of advertiser/agency services.
"Buyers have always had to look at individual media silos," she says. "For the first time the PPM can bring everything together."
In particular, she points to the device’s potential for measuring types of media consumption that are more changeable and dynamic than was the case years ago.
"You’ll be able to see, for instance, that a certain consumer may watch ‘Seinfeld’ in syndication and then move to listening to radio or visiting a web site. You’ll know exactly where they’ve gone, and not just whether they’ve gone to another TV show.
"It’s a layered, fluid experience, from one medium to the other. The big companies are buying in multiple types of media, and this can be a more informed way to deal with that."
Marshall Snyder, president of worldwide PPM development, emphasizes similar media-buying advantages. From the Wilmington test he hopes to learn various lessons that, he hopes, will make all this potential a reality.
"We’re expecting to learn more about the behavioral aspects of the panelists, and how to encourage them to participate and be reliable through the day, and to learn the true values of the PPM service in terms of improved targeting."
As Snyder suggests, all this hinges on getting consumers to play along with the system. Arbitron is not relying alone on the good will and neighborly cooperation of the American public.
"We can determine if the meter is in motion, if it’s being used," Snyder says, "and the consumers earn points the better they do. It’s sort of like airline miles. Their cooperation will convert into monetary incentives, such as a possible $10 to $20 award on a monthly basis."
-David Everitt writes about television from Huntington, New York.
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