Passive measurement of print: the promise and the perils of rfid technology

Until very recently, television was the only medium whose audience was measured electronically and at least somewhat passively. Then, along came the Internet, allowing for passive measurement of clickstream activity through special software placed on a panelist’s browser or through other electronic means. More recently, radio has begun moving in the direction of electronic, passive measurement with Telecontrol’s Mediawatch and Arbitron’s Portable People Meter. The Mediawatch – a watch outfitted with a small microphone that stores sound segments to which the wearer is exposed and compares them to radio or television broadcast signals — is now used in the radio currency study in Switzerland. The PPM – which detects inaudible codes in the radio broadcasts to which the respondent has been exposed – will be used in the radio currency study in Norway. It has also been deployed to measure both radio and television audiences in Belgium and television audiences in the French-speaking regions of Canada. These new devices have been tested in the UK (both the PPM and the Mediawatch), Germany (the Mediawatch), the US (the PPM), and many other countries. A third electronic, passive, portable device, the Eurikso Media Monitor, is now undergoing a field test alongside the PPM in an experiment conducted by the British radio JIC, RAJAR. And IPSOS in the UK recently announced that they have developed a fourth electronic passive radio measurement device embedded in a cell phone.

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