The history of development of TV audience measuring systems

<p>Television today is the most popular media vehicle; it accumulates about 50 percent of whole advertising budget. Nowadays it is impossible to make a decision on the allocation of these budgets without detailed data on the volume of TV audience on different channels. However there was no data on TV audience at the beginning of TV advertisement era. There was a long way with important names and inventions. As it is said by James G. Webster &laquo;the history of rating researches&nbsp; is a story of individual researches and entrepreneurs&hellip; it is also a storey of research methods&raquo;. In fact, in the television audience measurement industry every new stage of development of the measurement system is associated with a new method of data collection. Therefore, in this paper the history of television audience measurement systems is revealing through the methods used in different periods of time.</p><p>Aim of this study is to describe the development of the methods of television audience measurement and to compare their results.</p><p>As part of this goal there are following objectives:</p><p>&bull; to systematize methods used for industrial measurements of television audience;</p><p>&bull; to describe&nbsp; questionnaires and electronic audience measurement methods ;</p><p>&bull; to compare the results of studies carried out by various methods;</p><p>So, in the paper there is a description of the earliest method of TV audience measurement - postal mailing; of the transition from questionnaires to a radically new way of data collection, based on special devices &ndash; peoplemeters. Also there is an analysis of the latest technologies of TV audience measurements such as PPM, Media Watch, Virtual Meter and Return Path Data.</p><p>There is also a detailed comparison of the results of TV audience measurements conducted by different methods: questionnaires and electronic ones, peoplemeter and PPM.</p><p>As a result the hypothesis that the development of TV audience measurement systems were developed to be more and more accurate and to obtain all variety of TV viewing ways was confirmed.&nbsp;</p>