Traditionally, audience measurement entities determine compositions of audiences exposed to media by monitoring registered panel members and extrapolating their behavior onto a larger population of interest. That is, an audience measurement entity enrolls people that consent to being monitored into a panel and collects relatively highly accurate demographic information from those panel members via, for example, in-person, telephonic, and/or online interviews. The audience measurement entity then monitors those panel members to determine media exposure information identifying media (e.g., television programs, radio programs, movies, streaming media, etc.) exposed to those panel members. By combining the media exposure information with the demographic information for the panel members, and by extrapolating the result to the larger population of interest, the audience measurement entity can determine detailed audience measurement information such as media ratings, audience composition, reach, etc. This audience measurement information can be used by advertisers to, for example, place advertisements with specific media to target audiences of specific demographic compositions.
More recent techniques employed by audience measurement entities monitor exposure to Internet accessible media or, more generally, online media. These techniques expand the available set of monitored individuals to a sample population that may or may not include registered panel members. In some such techniques, demographic information for these monitored individuals can be obtained from one or more database proprietors (e.g., social network sites, multi-service sites, online retailer sites, credit services, etc.) with which the individuals subscribe to receive one or more online services. However, the demographic information available from these database proprietor(s) may be self-reported and, thus, unreliable or less reliable than the demographic information typically obtained for panel members registered by an audience measurement entity.
The figures are not to scale. Wherever appropriate, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawing(s) and accompanying written description to refer to the same or like parts.