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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

I still wonder if TV ads can be accurately monitored, since it's not possible to measure broadcast audience.

Being able to make measurements is a huge advantage for online ads.

> since it's not possible to measure broadcast audience.

It's actually really easy today for the vast majority of people with modern "cable" in the US. The reason why you need a cable box for each TV isn't just for de-scrambling the signal, it's also so we measure what channel you watched, when, and for how long. Go look into each cable box... it's basically a computer just like your modern Samsung TV, and like all computers it has "telemetry" baked in. We record telemetry regardless if it's live or DVR -- that's why the DVR is integrated for most consumers today.

All the major ad buyers know their "reach" per placement (the individual ad being broadcast during programming) pretty accurately. What's harder still is which people actually saw the ad, but we're getting closer.

We already know who you are as a subscriber (you had to provide us a SSN, phone number, name, and mailing address to get an account), so we literally know your household.

The only missing piece is which member of the household watches each show. There is some work to correlate internet traffic to infer which person was home at the time the ad played, but it's been less than helpful during prime time broadcasts when the whole household is home anyway.

We're working on it.

Anon because broadcasting all this tracking isn't good for my career.

Thanks for speaking up.

Broadcast audience is measured. They choose a representative selection of the population and install some device that tracks exactly what people are watching.

Nielsen is the best-known (possibly only?) company that does this in the US, and they're very good at what they do. Their use of a sample is perfectly fine, and there might even be grounds to argue that it's more accurate than trying to get a complete count of viewership.

But when it comes to ad viewership, I'm guessing all they can really measure is the attempt to show someone an ad. I'm not sure they have a good way to measure compliance. Are people actually watching the ads, or are they using ad breaks as an opportunity to take a leak, get another soda, or mute the TV and talk to each other?

Granted, the same's true for Internet ads. Does anyone really sit through YouTube ads? Or do they just mute their computer's audio and go take a peek at Facebook while the ad plays?

> Nielsen is the best-known (possibly only?) company that does this in the US, and they're very good at what they do. Their use of a sample is perfectly fine, and there might even be grounds to argue that it's more accurate than trying to get a complete count of viewership.

Sorry, but this isn't true. We've known for a long time that their ratings are BS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings#Criticism_of_r...

Your other point is true though: They can only attempt to track who is watching ads, not actually track.

I'm having trouble finding a reference, but there's an audio snooping application technology that will recognize what media you're watching or listening to and phone home with the details. Such an app could live in your phone (listening wherever you go) [how many apps demand microphone access, and why?], your Echo, etc.

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