The Globe and Mail has an interesting report on the effect of BBM Canada’s introduction of pager sized Portable People Meters (PPMs) in the Canadian television market. In the two months selected television viewers have carried this devices, television ratings have risen dramatically for some shows while fallen for others.
BBM Canada describes the PPM as:
The Portable People Meter, developed by Arbitron Inc., is a pager-sized device that is carried by a representative panel of television viewers. It automatically detects inaudible codes that broadcasters embed in the audio portion of their programming using encoders provided by BBM and Arbitron. At the end of each day, the survey participants place the meters into base stations that recharge the devices and send the collected codes to BBM for tabulation.
With the key advantage over set-top tracking boxes that no viewer interaction is required; children and multiple viewers can now be more accurately recorded. The article notes:
Among the benefactors, Teletoon is enjoying record ratings, since the pagers are better able to track when mothers watch cartoons with their children. Children, who were less likely to press the button on their ratings box, now simply have to have the pager with them to be counted. The number of children watching Teletoon is up 61 per cent this fall, while women have climbed a seemingly impossible 232 per cent.
Furthermore all television watching, even outside the home at friends or public places can be recorded. This has led to some dramatic ratings changes:
Sports has emerged as a big winner. Canada's three biggest sports networks – TSN, Rogers Sportsnet and The Score – have each seen ratings jumps of about 50 per cent. John Levy, CEO of Score Media, believes this is because the pagers are better at counting groups of people at home or in bars where the audio signal is loud enough to be detected. BBM estimates out-of-home viewing has pushed TV ratings up by 12 per cent.
There are some losers, late television ratings have fallen and this may be because that is when the PPMs are being recharged and the Weather Channel may no longer gain ratings for simply being on while people are out of the room and therefore out of the PPM’s recording range.