Systems and methods for gathering audience measurement data

• US 7,640,141 B2
• Filed: 06/22/2007
• Issued: 12/29/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/26/2002
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: The Nielsen Company LLC (MOOD Media Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Arbitron Inc. (MOOD Media Corporation)
• Inventors: Lynch, Wendell D., Jensen, James M., Kolessar, Ronald S.
• Primary Examiner(s): Lau; Tung S
• Assistant Examiner(s): SUN, XIUQIN
• Application Number:
  US11/767,254
• Publication Number:
  US 20080015820A1
• Time in Patent Office: 921 Days
• Field of Search: 702/189, 379/413, 386/46, 709/231, 700/94, 725/9
• US Class Current: 702/189
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/31 Arrangements for monitoring the use made of the broadcast services

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for gathering audience measurement data relating to exposure of an audience member to audio data. Audio data is received in a user system and is then encoded with audience measurement data. The encoded audio data is reproduced by the user system, picked up by a monitor and decoded to recover the audience measurement data.

Claims

1. A method for reproducing audio data in an audience member user system, the method comprising the steps of:

encoding audience measurement data audio data already encoded with different audience measurement data, wherein the audience measurement data comprises demographic data about the audience member; and

processing the encoded audio data to be reproducible as sound for the audience member.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the audience measurement data and the different audience measurement data encoded in the audio data comprise portions having frequency characteristics enabling separate detection thereof.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the audience measurement data is encoded according to one of an asynchronous or synchronous positioning relative to the already encoded different audience measurement data.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the audience measurement data is received along with the audio data.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein encoding of the audience measurement data comprises forming a data set of frequency-domain data.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein encoding of the audience measurement data comprises producing the frequency-domain data based on the audience measurement data.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the frequency-domain data is processed to embed the audience measurement data in the form of frequency components having predetermined frequencies.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein the frequency-domain data is processed to embed code components of the audience measurement data according to a frequency-hopping pattern.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the code components comprise pairs of frequency components modified in amplitude.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the code components comprise pairs of frequency components modified in phase.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising decoding the audio data by forming and processing a data set therefrom to extract the audience measurement data.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein processing the data set comprises transforming the audio data to the frequency domain.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the frequency domain data is processed to extract code components having predetermined frequencies.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the frequency domain data is processed to detect code components distributed according to a frequency-hopping pattern.

15. A method for gathering audience measurement data from audio data, and with an audience member user system arranged to reproduce the audio data as sound for an audience member, the method comprising:

receiving the audio data in the user system;

encoding the audio data with audience measurement data asynchronously or synchronously relative to other audience measurement data encoded in the audio data, wherein the audience measurement data comprises demographic data about the audience member; and

processing the audio data encoded with audience measurement data to be reproducible as sound for the audience member.

16. A method for reproducing audio data in an audience member user system as sound, the method comprising the steps of:

encoding audience measurement data, wherein the audience measurement data comprises demographic data about the audience member, wherein the audience measurement data is encoded relative to other audience measurement data encoded in the audio data; and

processing the audio data encoded with the audience measurement data to be reproducible as sound for the audience member.