Nielsen has announced that starting in September it will begin placing approximately 3,000 new Portable People Meter Wearables in a subset of its nearly 60,000 active PPM panelists. Nielsen says the new PPM Wearable include wristbands, clips and pendants, which the ratings firm says are more appealing among demographics that typically have lower compliance.
Nielsen says the PPM wearable devices and technology “is part of Nielsen’s continued efforts to modernize its panels and improve the panelist experience, drive broader adoption among existing and new panelists and increase engagement among more challenging demographics.”
The PPM is currently used for audio, local TV and national audience measurement. It’s used to measure both in-home and out of home tuning for audio and local TV and out-of-home tuning for Nielsen’s National TV estimates. The next-gen wearable PPM metering will serve as foundational support for Nielsen ONE, a cross-media solution that will deliver a single, deduplicated metric for total media consumption across TV, Digital and Audio.
In addition to the wearables, a new companion app will help “improve communication, encourage participation and enable data transmission when the device is outside the home,” according to a Nielsen press release. The companion app will also allow Nielsen to add new features and capabilities and adapt more seamlessly to new data and technology trends.
Nielsen plans to share top line findings in Q2 2022 of this subset of panelists phase, with the full rollout of PPM Wearables in new panel households planned for the second half of 2022.
Nielsen says the PPM Wearables have been through a series of rigorous tests and the system has performed very well in each phase. Tests included lab, focus groups, and dual-carry testing that measure how the wearables detect codes versus the current PPM among the same panelists.
Apps like Shazam are known to cause battery drain and background data use issues. I believe it would be very troublesome for Nielsen to support the volume and variety of cell phone models, including where we keep them. It would likely be more difficult to guarantee audio reception with a high likelihood of picking up embedded signals if the device is in our pocket or gym bag.
Why can’t they just figure out a way to use cell phones as a PPM? So much data about the person is already right there and you carry it around with you anyway.