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Ad Measurement Is Going High-Tech

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the they're-in-the-phone dept.

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "A media-measurement company called IMMI is giving panel participants special cellphones that can take reliable sound samples to track consumer behavior. 'Those snippets -- taken every 30 seconds and altered mathematically so any conversation is made unintelligible -- are transmitted continuously to IMMI,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Sounds from headphone devices such as iPods can be transmitted to the cellphones with a wireless accessory. IMMI has been building a database of sound signatures, with help from customers testing the company's services as well as with CD content it has licensed.' The idea is to use the sound signatures to test what media consumers are exposed to -- everything from radio music to movie trailers."

3 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. TRMs by mogrify · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds kinda like Relatable's TRM fingerprints, which are used by MusicBrainz and in the Neuros audio player.

    IIRC, the fingerprints don't have any actual content in them, but instead describe the characteristics of the audio. So it's plausible, at least, that they can't listen in on your conversations, but could still uniquely identify what you're listening to.

    --
    perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
  2. IMMI Website by awwaiid · · Score: 2, Informative

    is at http://immi.com/, btw.

  3. Using a cell-phone as a bugging device by infolation · · Score: 2, Informative
    In the UK the remote monitoring of local audio via the microphone using cell-phones (mobiles phones) by the police has been reported in reputable national media since at least mid 2005.

    The Financial Times (requires subscription) ran an article on this subject on 2nd of August 2005 here

    If ordered to do so, mobile telephone operators can also tap any calls, but more significantly they can also remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call, giving security services the perfect bugging device. "We have inadvertently started carrying our own trackable ID card in the form of the mobile phone," said Sandra Bell, head of the homeland security department at the Royal United Services Institute.

    A reference to this FT article can be found here.