How do you measure the impact of advertising? This is the question looming over the industry as it becomes increasingly defragmented and digitalized. In a given day, we encounter billboards, pop-ups, magazine ads, telemarketers… even commercials at the movies. With so many touchpoints, it’s hard to tell what actually reaches a person, let alone influences them.
Many companies are trying to solve this issue, and one called Integrated Media Measurement is using mobile to do it. Via chips embedded in cell phones, they hope to measure a person’s exposure to audio ads anywhere they go. The premise: what a person hears, their phone hears.
Here’s how it works: The software picks up audio and converts it into a digital code, which is then sent to the IMMI database. The database scans the code for media content such as TV, commercial, song, movie, etc. Most importantly, it attempts to measure the effectiveness of an ad by determining whether a person actually goes and views the advertised content. This software is currently only embedded into the cell phones of the company’s 4,900 panelists between the ages of 13 and 54. While it’s limited to ads you can hear at the moment, thus lending itself to entertainment, IMMI has hopes to expand to consumer products and is currently working with a national grocery store chain.
The industry desperately needs some sort of standard for multimedia, so it’s worth noting that big players like Nielson, ESPN and Zenith Media have signed up. It’s already proving its worth. ESPN reported that “Monday Night Football” on Sept. 8 saw viewership jump 10%, when people watching in bars and elsewhere were added to the traditional on-air figure.
