ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the history of the audience measurement industry, introduces past, current, and emerging audience measurement methods, and suggests an agenda for future research. Defining and measuring audience exposure have been one of the most important tasks in the audience measurement industry and research. Since the inception of mass media, establishing standard metrics for audience exposure has been a collaborative and sometimes contentious issue among audience measurement companies, media organizations, advertisers, and regulators. This chapter starts with scholarly discussions on the concept of “audience,” and reviews the history of the audience measurement business in the United States. In doing so, this chapter explains how the conventions of audience measurement have been established by major audience measurement companies and how newer measurement methods are introduced within the boundary of these established conventions. It concludes with a discussion of the future direction of the audience measurement industry and research.
