Snitch-Berry

The company Arbitron has created a device that acts as an advertising exposure Geiger-counter; monitoring our daily recommended dosage of ad-sell.


The “Portable People Meter” is about the size of a pager or blackberry and, via signals encoded into television and radio ads, monitors which radio stations, television shows, and thereby, advertising you’re exposed to. Each night, in its’ cradle, sends the consolidated data back to home-base.


This ‘canary in a coal-mine’ approach to measure advertising’s effectiveness is a bizarre turn of events. It mutates the audience from the target into a filter of advertising. Companies mine the depths of the markets and media to see where their ad dollars are best spent. Testing the air to see what is the most potent forms of communication, this method is relatively innocuous to the participant.


Throw in the promise of some free seed and see how many willing subjects line up for the job. It’s safe. Advertising is, after all, tasteless, odorless, and harmless in small doses.


Then again, it never works out well for the canary, does it?