As a consumer, we are all accustomed to advertisments but probably never think about how hard it is to measure the effectiveness of advertising. As a business, you want to pay for results which means you want to know which ads work, who they work on, and why. But this information is surprisingly difficult to get.

Measuring advertising is where Google is making its money and there are a number of other companies that are trying to address this problem. I have said before that I thoguht Tivo could have become such a measurement data company but this article covers some of the companies that are trying to solve this problem, some of which are pretty far-out there.

Ad Measurement Is Going High Tech

Explosion of Media Offerings Complicates Finding Whether Message Is Getting Through

By DON CLARK

April 6, 2006

Media companies have long searched, with mixed results, for proof that advertising works. Some high-tech help may be on the way.

A number of established audience-measurement companies and industry newcomers are developing tools to better gauge the connection between media exposure and consumer behavior. The audience-measurement job is more complicated these days because of an explosion of media offerings in and outside the home.

A dark horse in the race is Integrated Media Measurement Inc., a start-up led by some prominent technology entrepreneurs that is using specially adapted cellphones to measure what consumers listen to and see. The company has developed software that helps the phones take samples of nearby sounds, which are identified by comparing them against a database.

Besides television and radio, IMMI, as the San Mateo, Calif., company calls itself, says the technology can track exposure to CDs, DVDs, videogames, sporting events, audio and video on portable gadgets and movies in theaters. The closely held company has been testing its system for nine months with about 200 consumers in Sacramento, Calif., and hopes to help answer some tricky questions. They include:

• How often are TV shows watched outside the home?

• Which songs prompt listeners to change radio stations?

• Which movie trailers get viewers to go to the theater?

...

Radio and TV exposure has long been measured, respectively, by Arbitron and VNU NV's Nielsen Media Research. Methods include pen-and-paper usage logs filled out by selected panels of consumers, as well as devices that passively measure media usage in the home.