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Radio audience measurement has always been a challenge, almost a myth… Many have tried vainly to improve data collection methods and the accuracy of the results.
Everyone knows traditional audience measurement is far from being precise, even if measurement and statistics or polling institutes have done their best with the technical means available to them.
Current methodologies fall into these two categories:
Manual surveys are usually live, by phone, and involve around 25 minutes of successive questions… a nightmare for both the interviewer and the panel member. This gives a low chance of getting accurate results, and obviously, sometimes answers are given out of fatigue to speed up the process and shorten it as quickly as possible.
The second type of method that has appeared on the market is based on watermarking technology. Even if this technology seems modern and advanced, it is not the case, especially since it produces mitigated results due to the small size of the panel and technical constraints. First of all, watermarking imposes a live modification on the source of each radio signal to inject data continuously, to later allow a dedicated box to identify the channel being listened to. This technical step generally creates between the live and the broadcast stream a delay of up to several hundred milliseconds, clearly impacting the broadcast chain. Secondly, while the idea of asking the panel member to wear a decoder to avoid telephone polls is a good one, it has a number of disadvantages: cost of the decoder, an additional device to carry, to recharge,…
Finally, it is an expensive solution pushing data collection companies to severely limit the number of active devices. It is challenging to perform a representative measurement when a dozen devices must cover a region with hundreds of thousands of potential listeners.
Therefore be prepared to be surprised by a solution that has the ability to change the game forever!
SoundID Audience, our content recognition solution based on in-house complex algorithms is the result of 7 years of research and development and 2 more years of fine-tuning it to provide the most outstanding results for effective dynamic audience measurement.
Our advantages are numerous: foremost, no change to the source is necessary, and this is far from negligible. We simply listen live and continuously to the relevant radio or TV streams to generate a continuous digital audio fingerprint for each.
Then our smartphone app samples ambient sounds around the panel member and generates a digital audio fingerprint for each sample. They are generated locally on the smartphone, and the process is non-reversible, which completely preserves privacy and complies with GDPR requirements, for example. Next, these digital fingerprints are sent to our central servers, and finally, both the sound and the generated fingerprint are erased locally.
The fingerprints received are then simply compared to those of each of the streams concerned by the panel, which makes it possible to detect which radio station is potentially listened to by each of the members of the panel at each instant.
To sum up, each member of the panel directly installs the SoundID Audience application on their smartphone and registers in their panel using a code received beforehand. He does not change any of his habits because the app manages everything for him by activating the device’s microphone at periodic intervals. These intervals are predefined and can be updated by the panel manager.
Even if the mobile remains inside a pocket, we can capture enough sound to recognize what he is listening to, which really limits the constraints. For personal reasons, the user may of course temporarily disconnect from the panel, knowing he will potentially lose part of the reward that the panel manager can set up as an incentive for the most complete participation possible.
Using the device that users already own greatly limits the cost of an additional member in the panel, allowing the panel owner to significantly increase the size of the panel to ensure the data collected represents the effective audience distribution.
Regarding the measurements, SoundID Audience can confirm at any time the number of active panel members, the percentage of listeners for a monitored radio/television, the percentage of listening to something else or nothing. These data are eventually available minute by minute without extra effort, without a dedicated device for each panel member, and with surprising accuracy.
To achieve this, no considerable investment is necessary. Only deploy SoundID Audience on your premises or in our Cloud. Next, you can configure the details of your panel, which will subsequently allow each member of your panel to install and then link their SoundID Audience application on their own smartphone.
Surprising isn’t it? Please contact us to start benefiting from the precision and power of SoundID Audience. This technology is available as a standalone solution or an optional module for happy SoundID or SoundID AI owners.
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