Researchers keep an ear on your listening time

By PETER GRIFFIN technology writer

Picture the scene. A pensioner divulges the details of her radio listening habits for the last week to a market researcher. "On Monday I listened to ZB, or was it Radio Pacific? Then I switched to Concert FM, but I think it was only for a few minutes ... "

It is a ritual experienced by thousands of volunteers every year and one the multi-million-dollar advertising decisions of the world's largest corporations rest on.

Market research companies have bombarded us for years with surveys and polls - all in the interests of finding out what propels us to buy, but the market researchers and the clients they represent have never been satisfied they are getting value for money.

Now technology is being used to determine precisely what we read, watch and listen to and when.

Swiss company SRG SSR and the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation have created a high-tech wristwatch that monitors the viewing, listening and multimedia downloading behaviour of wearers.

The watch functions as a normal digital wristwatch but it has a built-in microphone that is activated for four seconds every minute.

Wherever you are - listening to the radio in the car, standing in a supermarket or lying in bed - the watch is listening and will take a "soundbite" of your surrounding environment.

When the watches are returned to the marketeers after a week, the soundbites are compared with recorded media drawn from a vast range of radio and TV stations monitored by the company. Matching up the watch's recording times with the monitoring station's recordings allows the researchers to identify what you have been taking in.

Professor Matthias Steinmann, the watch's inventor, was in Auckland last week to present the tool to global market research company ACNielsen.

"While conventional surveys evaluate what the interviewees remember, Radiocontrol measures what the people actually listen to. It also measures radio listening in situations in which the test person might not be fully aware of his or her media use."

At present the system is used only in Switzerland, where 22,000 people a year wear the watch for a week, but ACNielsen has expressed interest in bringing the watch to other regions.

But it may not get such an enthusiastic reception worldwide as it has among the Swiss, who are lured into the week of monitoring with a limited edition Swatch watch.

As Professor Steinmann said: "It probably wouldn't pass privacy laws in Australia or here."