TABLE OF CONTENTS Content owners need to know who is watching their movies and listening to their audio streams, regardless of whether they are addressing a consumer or user audience. In the consumer world, audience monitoring and measurement is critical to charging advertising fees. Without size and demographic information, the cost per impression quickly becomes miniscule, which is why revenue from Internet banner and pop-ads dropped through the floor during the tech wreck of 2001 and 2002. About 2,000 ads were served during June 2001, but there was only a 0.02 percent click-through rate that took the viewer to the ad sponsor. Why so low? It is impossible to tell. Perhaps the ad was not visible or vibrant enough to capture the consumer s attention. More likely, the ad was shown to any random person associated with the site instead of potential customers of the advertiser.
Audience monitoring and measurement for broadcast entertainment has been handed over to the Nielsen rating system and Arbitron. Using a specific statistical methodology that spreads measuring devices among a representative population of television viewers, these companies then collect, standardize, and aggregate the data, so that viewer s behavior is only represented to content providers and advertisers in aggregate. It is an imperfect yet perfectly acceptable solution, particularly when there is no feedback loop between a television set or radio receiver and the broadcaster to tell the content...
