In my humble opinion the hard part is not tracking what is served; there is a request to a server after all. Tracking use beyond initial download is much harder. An imposed structure wouldn't work I don't think, nobody want to be spied on. But perhaps viewers could be induced to share that information. Paying panelists could work; even a pittance credited to (for example) PayPal might be enough. But appealing to people's sense of community could work too. Some people are passionate about their favorite TV shows.
An idea could be to use a player capable of pinging home with play data the next time the device (or its host computer) is online. iTunes tracks number of plays (both on computer and on each iPod) today irrespective of whether media is FairPlay DRM'd or not. Does Apple collect that? I have no idea, but I would not be surprised if they do. Of course, anyone consolidating or datamining such data would want more than a ping... - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
