Audience measurement of media (e.g., content and/or advertisements, such as broadcast television and/or radio programs and/or advertisements, stored audio and/or video programs and/or advertisements played back from a memory such as a digital video recorder or a digital video disc, audio and/or video programs and/or advertisements played via the Internet, video games, etc.) often involves collection of media identifying data (e.g., signature(s), fingerprint(s), embedded code(s), channel information, time of presentation information, etc.) and people data (e.g., user identifiers, demographic data associated with audience members, etc.). The media identifying data and the people data can be combined to generate, for example, media exposure data indicative of amount(s) and/or type(s) of people that were exposed to specific piece(s) of media.
In some audience measurement systems, the collected people data includes an amount of people in a media exposure environment (e.g., a television room, a family room, a living room, a cafeteria at a place of business or lounge, a television viewing section of a store, restaurant, a bar, etc.). To calculate the amount of people in the environment, some measurement systems capture image(s) of the environment and analyze the image(s) to determine how many people appear in the image(s) at a particular date and time. The calculated amount of people in the environment can be correlated with media being presented in the environment at the particular date and time to provide exposure data (e.g., ratings data) for that media.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds