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December 05, 2006
"our ratings, our selves"
We've been talking in one of my classes lately about the Nielsen ratings and how Nielsen is leaning toward tracking individuals and their movements, not just samples of people, which is how Nielsen has traditionally operated. One new method that Nielsen rival Arbitron has come up with is the Personal People Meter (PPM), a device that certain people would wear that picks up a signal from the code built in to different types of media. For instance, if you're watching a TV show, the device would pick up the signal from the built-in code of that show, which is inaudible to humans (and also not such a high frequency that it would bother pets). The whole concept seems insane, since it includes even things like billboards, which have no sound but would still have some sort of code built into them that gives off a signal that the device can detect. The PPM could pick up anything from a radio show to music in a bar.
Nielsen and Arbitron will probably try to work together to produce something that will be able to track people individually, which is of immense value to advertisers. Right now, with the diversification of the media landscape, as well as things like TiVo, finding out who is watching or listening to what is getting harder and harder.
However, we talked in class about who would have the power in this situation. In the past, we as a "market" had more power, since there was still an element of mystery in our daily media consumption. But if someone somewhere can track what I am doing any hour of the day, that's an incredible step towards less privacy and less mystery. Are we willing to give that up? Granted, the PPM would be given only to a sample of people, not everyone. Still, our professor pointed out that we seem to moving from a "society" to an "economy." In other words, we are more and more being treated as individual consumers rather than as a group of people with an interest in the common good. I find this dichotomy to be false, since it seems our society has always run on an economy that is based on individual interests. Still, there is no doubt that developing technology has a huge influence on our culture and on how we interact with each other.
My professor likes to emphasize that he enjoys encountering things and people that are NOT like him or do not have the same interests as him. He likes having random encounters with people on the street rather than purposely seeking out people who are like him on the Internet. He also does not like the idea of seeing the same type of advertisments targeted at his demographic all the time (which could be a consequence of this increasingly individualized and targeted measuring) and not seeing any targeted at others. That would get old.
This discussion makes me feel tired and causes me to long for a simpler life. However, this is the society we live in today, and we can take it or leave it. Other time periods had their own problems. Thinking about this issue makes me cherish the timelessness of the Christmas story even more, not to mention God's unchanging nature in the midst of change.
| By heiders | 01:33 PM
Comments
When I saw the Queen it was put on by iTV (a major channel in Britain) and they were discussing the possibilities of using advertisements AT ALL. Shew. Of course, they were very clear about not wanting to follow the "American model," which in this case I agreed with. Good post, BTW.
Posted by: Anna at December 6, 2006 02:21 AM
