Mediawatch

GfK Telecontrol has invested heavily in the development of a portable meter. Assisted by four university institutes, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich and 16 external companies, a new measuring device was developed that had to be so small and handy - despite its powerful performance - that panellists did not feel restricted in their everyday lives and their media behaviour remained unaffected. GfK Telecontrol’s solution to this problem was ingenious: the measuring device was manufactured in the shape of and with the functions of a wristwatch. Wearing a watch is natural for most people and does not affect everyday life. As a result, people’s willingness to participate in a study and wearing the watch is at a high level (the Swiss panel has a response rate of more than 85%) and panellists can be relied on to wear the watch (on average, 17 hours per day in Switzerland).

GfK Telecontrol’s Mediawatch is now on the market in its third generation. Its integral microphone registers the radio and TV programmes that the wearer listens to either at home, at work or on the move. The registered samples are coded in the watch and stored in heavily compressed form. This procedure makes a reconstruction of the recordings impossible. At the same time, the stations to be measured are recorded at central locations for the relevant TV and radio market.

Alongside radio and TV measurement, the watch can also be used to measure print media or billboards: via the watch display, the watch wearer can save data on newspapers and magazines read and, via an RF signal, the watch recognizes when its wearer has gone past a tagged poster or billboard.
A detailed description of the Mediawatch can be found in the Downloads section of this website. Please contact us if you are interested in learning whether your research question or your market is suitable for a Mediawatch study.