Ed Felten blogs about a new audience measurement technique. Instead of using viewing journals (which only report on what people think they should be watching) or set-top boxes (which only report on what people leave their sets tuned to), the new technology pays sample listeners to wear an audio-bug. The bug is sensitive to audio watermarks in the soundtracks of programs that are around you, so that it actually logs what you listen to, not what you report or what you leave your set tuned to. Ed points out some likely consequences of this more accurate metric:
…[B]y measuring what people actually hear, the technologies will strengthen advertisers' incentives to deliver ads in ways that defeat the standard measures we use to skip or avoid them. No longer will advertisers measure attempts to deliver audio ads; now they'll measure success in delivering sound waves to our ears. So we'll hear more and more audio ads in captive-audience situations like elevators, taxicabs, and doctors' waiting rooms. Won't that be nice?
