Portable People Meter
Encyclopedia
The Portable People Meter (PPM) is a system developed by Arbitron
to measure how many people are listening (or at least exposed) to individual radio station
s and television station
s, including cable TV. The PPM is worn like a pager
, and detects hidden audio tones within a station or network's audio stream, logging each time it finds such a signal. It has proved to be much more accurate than the old handwritten logs or wired meters, and is immune to forgetful test subjects.
There are several parts to the PPM system:
The system can also be used for other media
, such as movie
s and music
which are recorded with a digital encoding. Various venues and retail locations are also encoding their media in the Houston area.
The concept was presented to the company at that time and was also written up in a short concept document. A preliminary investigation was undertaken, however, but the technology was never given serious consideration. The concept was written off and forgotten as Arbitron had bigger fish to fry in its competition with the Nielsen Company for television ratings. Arbitron lost that battle and went back to its core business – radio ratings.
Dr. Cohen’s idea lay dormant until 1992 when Drs. Richard Schlunt and Patrick Nunally approached Arbitron. Meeting with Ronald Kolessar, Director of Technology, Dr. Cohen and others, they presented a new variation of the idea – selectively embed a code into the frequency spectrum of the baseband audio stream and use digital signal processing in a small wearable device to recover the embedded code buried in what a person watches or listens to.
Convinced that that concept could be achieved, Mr. Kolessar obtained approval from Arbitron's management to undertake a fast-track effort to determine feasibility. Lacking the internal expertise to do so – additional outside help from Martin Marietta
was sought. Facing cutbacks in the defense industry, Martin Marietta agreed to take on commercial business even to the point of signing away all rights to the technology they were to develop. Engineers at Martin Marietta decided that the best approach was to employ the principle of psychoacoustics
to mask the embedded code signal, an approach described in U.S. Patent No. 5,450,490.
Now a full-fledged project having management support, development by engineers at Arbitron focused on improving the encoding and detection methodology and miniaturization into a hand-held device. Additional capabilities such as motion detection were added later on.
In 2008, EE Times as part of their Great Minds, Great Ideas Project profiled Mr. Kolessar as the "Inventor of the Portable People Meter".
, as well as other firms that provide research and consulting services to radio stations, have begun publishing numerous studies based on analysis of PPM data.
The PPM is an electronic measurement system that delivers empirical, verifiable audience measurement data. These results are sometimes at odds with the results generated with the diary method in which listeners were asked to note each change of their radio dial. Some minority diarists may have used their diaries as a way to support and show loyalty for stations which targeted their communities. To delay the shift to electronic audience measurement , the creator of the PPM, Arbitron, is being challenged by the Spanish Radio Association (SRA) and a number of politicians as to its accuracy in measuring minority listening.
Arbitron has been sued
by the attorneys general of several U.S. state
s over the PPM's effect on minorities.
Arbitron
Arbitron is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio audiences. It was founded as American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with L.A. based Coffin, Cooper and Clay in the early 1950s...
to measure how many people are listening (or at least exposed) to individual radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
s and television station
Television station
A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...
s, including cable TV. The PPM is worn like a pager
Pager
A pager is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can only receive a message consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user is then requested to call...
, and detects hidden audio tones within a station or network's audio stream, logging each time it finds such a signal. It has proved to be much more accurate than the old handwritten logs or wired meters, and is immune to forgetful test subjects.
There are several parts to the PPM system:
- An encoderEncoderAn encoder is a device, circuit, transducer, software program, algorithm or person that converts information from one format or code to another, for the purposes of standardization, speed, secrecy, security, or saving space by shrinking size.-Media:...
which inserts the tones (via psychoacoustic maskingPsychoacousticsPsychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound...
) into a station's or networkBroadcast networkA broadcast network is an organization, such as a corporation or other voluntary association, that provides live television or recorded content, such as movies, newscasts, sports, Public affairs programming, and other television programs for broadcast over a group of radio stations or television...
's airchainAirchainIn broadcast engineering for radio or television, the airchain or transmission chain is the path or route an audio or video signal takes on its way through a radio station or television station.The airchain begins with cameras, microphones, CD players, turntables, telephone hybrids, video tape...
. - A monitor which checks that the encoder is working properly.
- The wearable Portable People Meter itself.
- A base stationBase stationThe term base station can be used in the context of land surveying and wireless communications.- Land surveying :In the context of external land surveying, a base station is a GPS receiver at an accurately-known fixed location which is used to derive correction information for nearby portable GPS...
for each PPM, where each person in the householdHouseholdThe household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family"....
places it overnight to rechargeRechargeable batteryA rechargeable battery or storage battery is a group of one or more electrochemical cells. They are known as secondary cells because their electrochemical reactions are electrically reversible. Rechargeable batteries come in many different shapes and sizes, ranging anything from a button cell to...
the battery and to transmit information to the hub. - A portable recharger for vacationsTourismTourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
and other trips away from the home base. - A hub (or collector) for each household that takes the collected information and has a modemModemA modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
to upload it overnight via telephoneTelephoneThe telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
.
The system can also be used for other media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, such as movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s and music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
which are recorded with a digital encoding. Various venues and retail locations are also encoding their media in the Houston area.
History
The original concept for the PPM can be traced back to a brainstorming session at Arbitron in November 1988. At that time, concerns over the forthcoming move from analog video to high-definition digital television had engineers concerned that the technology currently in use would become obsolete overnight. Drawing upon his experience in testing labs, Dr. Gerald Cohen proposed embedding an identifying signal in the audio and later decoding it. The rationale was simple. Dr. Cohen argued that audio was less likely to undergo as drastic a change in content and technology as would video, hence any technology developed would not likely to become obsolete in a few years.The concept was presented to the company at that time and was also written up in a short concept document. A preliminary investigation was undertaken, however, but the technology was never given serious consideration. The concept was written off and forgotten as Arbitron had bigger fish to fry in its competition with the Nielsen Company for television ratings. Arbitron lost that battle and went back to its core business – radio ratings.
Dr. Cohen’s idea lay dormant until 1992 when Drs. Richard Schlunt and Patrick Nunally approached Arbitron. Meeting with Ronald Kolessar, Director of Technology, Dr. Cohen and others, they presented a new variation of the idea – selectively embed a code into the frequency spectrum of the baseband audio stream and use digital signal processing in a small wearable device to recover the embedded code buried in what a person watches or listens to.
Convinced that that concept could be achieved, Mr. Kolessar obtained approval from Arbitron's management to undertake a fast-track effort to determine feasibility. Lacking the internal expertise to do so – additional outside help from Martin Marietta
Martin Marietta
Martin Marietta Corporation was an American company founded in 1961 through the merger of The Martin Company and American-Marietta Corporation. The combined company became a leader in chemicals, aerospace, and electronics. In 1995, it merged with Lockheed Corporation to form Lockheed Martin. The...
was sought. Facing cutbacks in the defense industry, Martin Marietta agreed to take on commercial business even to the point of signing away all rights to the technology they were to develop. Engineers at Martin Marietta decided that the best approach was to employ the principle of psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound...
to mask the embedded code signal, an approach described in U.S. Patent No. 5,450,490.
Now a full-fledged project having management support, development by engineers at Arbitron focused on improving the encoding and detection methodology and miniaturization into a hand-held device. Additional capabilities such as motion detection were added later on.
In 2008, EE Times as part of their Great Minds, Great Ideas Project profiled Mr. Kolessar as the "Inventor of the Portable People Meter".
Research reports
The PPM is attempting to provide new insights into how audiences respond to the various programming elements radio stations offer. ArbitronArbitron
Arbitron is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio audiences. It was founded as American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with L.A. based Coffin, Cooper and Clay in the early 1950s...
, as well as other firms that provide research and consulting services to radio stations, have begun publishing numerous studies based on analysis of PPM data.
The PPM is an electronic measurement system that delivers empirical, verifiable audience measurement data. These results are sometimes at odds with the results generated with the diary method in which listeners were asked to note each change of their radio dial. Some minority diarists may have used their diaries as a way to support and show loyalty for stations which targeted their communities. To delay the shift to electronic audience measurement , the creator of the PPM, Arbitron, is being challenged by the Spanish Radio Association (SRA) and a number of politicians as to its accuracy in measuring minority listening.
Arbitron has been sued
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
by the attorneys general of several U.S. state
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
s over the PPM's effect on minorities.
External links
- PPM at Arbitron
- Study on the impact of commercials on radio audiences on the Coleman Insights website
- Study on the impact of new music on the audience levels of Country-formatted radio stations on the Coleman Insights website
- Spanish Radio Assoc. Responds to Concerns About PPM at NY Council Meeting
- Innovator Profile of Ron Kolessar