Current Trends in U.S. Media Measurement Methods

Abstract

There are several noteworthy trends unfolding today in media audience research methodology in the United States that will have important implications for media managers and others who rely on this research for insights when considering strategic and tactical organizational decisions. Among these, 1 shift stands out as having perhaps the largest long-term impact for media management. This is the movement toward the use of multiple data sources in the creation of media use estimates—approaches commonly referred to as “hybrid” methodologies. This is a trend that is occurring in different ways across many media types, and involves combinations of different sources of data, often based on both traditional methods, like survey research, as well as newer, technologically enabled methods, such as the census-like counting methods employed in Internet measurement or set-top box measurement in television. This article details several key methodological trends in media research, including the trend toward hybrid measurement, and suggests implications they may hold for today's media managers.

Notes

1. The second Active/Passive Meter engine, audio signatures, does not require encoding, and can provide a secondary identification means in cases when the embedded code is unavailable, incomplete, or otherwise not picked up by the meter.

2. In the United States, although online measurement panels are often built using opt-in recruitment approaches, measurements from these large panels are typically “calibrated” to another source, such as a probability-based panel, to help correct for recruitment biases inherent to a non-probability opt-in approach.