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Originally posted by rabbitjoker Phew! I've spent the last 6 years of my life deeply involved in advertising media with a focus on pioneering new audience metric techniques, methods of audience segmentation and predictive behavrioral models of consumers and their media consumption habbits. Arbitron is -the- company that provides ratings for radio broadcasters and marketers in the USA (I work almost exclusively in the US market - so will comment on that since that is what I know. Canada is in the ice ages compared to the US in consumer research). Arbitron has a "Portable People Meters" that measure what a person is listening to. The PPM picks up on whatever dominant signal exists at the point of listening - records the data - and then sents the listener statistics back to Arbitron. No programming or setup is required (in reply to Carlos' email). Arbitron also has mobile meters - which are trucks they can park on the side of hiways that "tune in" to what radio station cars are "tuned into". [broadcasters participate in this and may "encode" station IDs into their airplay] Both of these meters perform a vital function for marketers in that they provide audience reach (size), frequency (how many times/how long the person listens) but also demographic information about what the average listene (groups of listeners) look like. Based on the reach / frequency and demo data - ad rates are determined. Same type of thing as above goes on for television and internet. People have boxes/software installed on their TV/computer and are members of panels that determine station/website audience data. Magazines and Newspapers are slightly different (as you may have already concluded) For your enjoyment I've pulled a list of the top 15 internet broadcast networks so you can see what life looks like online: Weekly Top 15 Internet Broadcaster Networks (January 5 - January 11) RANK COMPANY TTSL CUME 1 AOL Radio@Network 6,058,658 1,474,930 2 LAUNCH 3,676,479 863,683 3 MUSICMATCH 2,115,851 501,775 4 The Adsertion Network 698,556 113,276 5 Virgin Radio 552,999 86,798 6 Educational Media Foundation 360,206 45,898 7 ABC Radio Network 328,467 62,726 8 AccuRadio 256,408 81,098 9 KillerOldies.com 122,213 19,130 10 KPLU 104,319 14,757 11 WXPN-FM 102,220 13,576 12 WOXY-FM 81,572 13,491 13 Emap 80,599 31,510 14 WBUR 75,789 21,230 15 Beethoven 67,904 10,462 (since the above are networks, each network can be more than 1 station) TTSL - Total Time Spent Listening CUME - # of unique listeners who tuned it for a minimum 5 minute period (not: di.fm is a part of the AOL music network) I'll elaborate further on this - a slight interpretation of the data from the 15 - but I've some work to do right now. I will be back later.

I don't understand how this works.
The system looks for a dominant signal in a perticular area. Does that mean the strongest radio signal or one that is the most listened to?
How does it detect what radio station the passing drivers on the highway are tuned into?