Green Light Time:
The "Sheer Fun Factor" of an Electronic Leash

This is a world where a microchip in your toothbrush will sense and transmit the brand of toothpaste applied to its bristles to awaiting computers, owned by corporations that care about your smile. One where you can have a career as an "Ad-Taxi," a paid meanderer wearing garments designed with pliable LCD screens that constantly run commercials so that no one has to wander the streets without them.

Are these real possibilities, or the pensive musings of cynical futurists? Frankly, neither — yet.

Introducing the "Portable People Meter" (PPM). This nifty do-dad, brought to you by Arbitron, a division of Ceridian Corporation, with funding from Nielson Media Research, is designed to track personal consumption of media over air waves, via cable, satellite, or on the Internet. Arbitron refers to the PPM as a "survey", referencing a time when someone with a clipboard would approach your mother at the supermarket. Survey participants are even known in Arbitron literature as "respondents."

The PPM is an "audience measurement system," a pager-sized device that traces what consumers listen to on the radio or watch on television throughout the day. It works by detecting identification codes embedded in the audio portion of a transmission. Both digital and analog broadcasts can be monitored, even those recorded and later played back. Wherever its host carrier goes, the PPM accumulates information.

There is, of course, compensation awarded to cooperative PPM participants. When the system detects motion (i.e. when it's being carried) a green light comes on. At the end of the day, "green light time" is recorded and converted to "points." These are used to determine the "incentives" paid to respondents. But there's more to it than mere material gain. According to Arbitron, one can't deny the "sheer fun factor" of participating in this valuable study.

What separates the device from earlier models is its portability. No matter where the PPM subject watches T.V. or listens to the radio (think showers here), and no matter where or when he or she uses the Internet, the Portable People Meter can "capture and report media exposure."

Since 1992, twenty-five individual studies have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the PPM system. Three critical areas have been the focus of these studies: encoding and decoding system performance and respondent compliance.

"The first official U.S. field test of the PPM was announced in June of 2000 and is currently taking place," according to Arbitron rep. Tom Mocarsky.

In Febuary of this year, Arbitron announced that it had placed meters with the first 50 PPM respondents in Wilmington, Delaware for its market trial. Over the following eight weeks, it enrolled and activated 250 more PPM consumers, for a total deployment of 300 meters. The meters read codes embedded within Philadelphia broadcast signals. So far, more than 55 radio, TV and cable channels are currently encoding their broadcasts using software provided by Arbitron. By 2002, more than 70 Philadelphia market broadcasters and cable networks will have been encoded and 1500 trial respondents will have participated.

How?
The actual device has four components: the Encoder, the Base Unit, the Household Hub, and the Portable People Meter. The Encoder, which is installed at radio and television stations or at the sources of transmission, creates a specific, inaudible "fingerprint" for each program. Designed to perform among everyday studio equipment, the encoder provides continual, real-time stereo encoding of program material as it is broadcast. The seemingly Orwellian science of "psychoacoustic masking," which "hides" tiny bits of sound energy in the normal audio output of an electronic media signal, is what creates the fingerprint.

Code Warriors
The coding scheme accommodates all industry standards and is capable of encoding monophonic, stereophonic and multi-channel signals. Furthermore, the codes are designed to survive hostile acoustic environments such as digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversions, compression, and widely used data decrement processes (such as MPEGs). But that's not the only hostility the Encoder is designed to withstand. An Arbitron priority was that the system be impervious to any attempt to tamper with or corrupt the embedded signal; attempts at doing so will effectively render the audio content unplayable. Or so Arbitron hopes, though only time and exposure to the mischievous world will tell. Of course, having brought in Lockheed Martin (the folks who made the U.S. a world leader in advanced anti-submarine warfare systems) for the development of their encoding/decoding technology, Arbitron's hopes will be realized.

And the individual?
When the PPM unit is inserted at night into its Base Station, its info can be read by the Arbitron Household Hub and transmitted directly to the company. The hub acquires data from all of the PPMs in the household and forwards it to a central system over a telephone line. Arbitron touts both the base unit and the hub as having been designed for "ease of installation and use by respondents."

As long as the PPM is carried, the green light is illuminated. Its motion detector, which calculates green light time, allows Arbitron to "track whether the participant is carrying the meter throughout the day," much like Corrections personnel can track an ankle-monitored criminal.

Why?
The PPM represents an urgently needed upgrade to current audience measuring methods. Arbitron went up against Nielsen's proven television ratings system in the past and didn't fare too well. Now they're working together on what could be the old system's replacement. Older audience measurement technologies were only able to monitor use of the home TV. The Portable People Meter, on the other hand, can monitor "passive television viewing." After eight years of research and refinement, Arbitron president Steve Morris has declared the PPM system "ready for deployment" in a town near you.

Who?
In early tests, Arbitron recruited panels of households for time periods ranging from one week to two months. Each potential participant was given a simulated PPM, which they were asked to carry just as they might in an actual survey. A mantra was promptly established:

1. Take your meter with you.
2. Keep the green light on (researchers watched for noncompliance in the daily upload of data and "panel relations staff" telephoned those who fell out of compliance).
3. Recharge/download your meter at bedtime.

Luckily, the Portable People Meter itself is designed to "enhance survey participants' involvement with the study, lessening their burden and increasing their compliance." Thus, the instructions for use are few. This is a key component of Arbitron's "Patented Respondent Cooperation System," a handy solution for market researchers who "must persuade an ever more reluctant population to take part" in their studies. In fact, Arbitron officials point out, the PPM is "as close to passive audience measurement" as you can get. Activities are automatically registered, "without any conscious effort."

Sound like a good idea? Ready to volunteer?

We'll leave the lab rat jokes alone for now.