This paper showcases how a pioneering research technique was used to answer questions arising from new tv broadcaster, consumer and brand behaviours. Specifically the paper shows how wearable glasses that capture high quality AV footage from a participant's perspective can add unique value and the challenges and learnings inherent in using such a method. The case study we use here emerged from a partnership between ITV and a strategic insight agency, Craft. ITV wished to understand how audiences of one of its most valuable UK programmes, The X Factor, used its companion smartphone/tablet app.
The audiometer*, a generic term perhaps preferable to radiometer given its applications equally to TV as for radio audience measurement, offers the marketplace a major technological advance in the measurement of broadcast audiences. The Radiocontrol Watch is used in Switzerland for national radio audience measurement. In the United States Arbitron has mounted its Philadelphia 300 Panel. This paper reviews the critical issue of the validity of these new systems. Do they actually measure what they purport to measure? Do people actually wear the devices from first thing in the morning to last thing at night? How exposed are they to false negatives and false positives: failing to pick up media exposure that has taken place, crediting TV/radio viewing/listening when there was none? These are the early days, but the early evidence from Arbitron and Radiocontrol looks most promising.
The idea of creating an electronic device for measuring the audience of radio dates back at Infratest Burke into the late 1970s, but was turned down because of technical problems. With the enormous technological progress in the computer industry and the miniaturizing of all components needed, Infratest Burke revived its ideas and started to develop an electronic measurement system in 1995 in collaboration with Kayser Threde, a German systems engineering company. Part I of this paper provides a short overview of the development of the Radio Watch, the reasoning for choosing a purely passive approach and the logic of the measurement process. Part II reports on the current stages of the technical development and the first results of a field test aimed at detecting the readiness of the population to participate in this kind of research and to wear a measurement device at all times during waking hours.
Originally, it was thought that the need for a wearable passive meter was mostly to improve the current response rates of Nielsen and Arbitron audiences. However, even if there were no need to improve upon the current response rates of Peoplemeters and diaries, we would currently still require a new measurement tool. In fact, by as early as next year, the current methodologies available for measuring audience attendance will most probably be inadequate for the job.