Pulp Science Fiction: MRI Plans To Make Paper Digital, Interactive

In a move that would make the printed page digitally interactive, giving advertisers the potential to electronically measure readership not just of magazines, but also of individual pages within magazines, Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI) today will announce plans to begin testing a promising new technology that can literally print an interactive microchip on a page. That technology, known as radio frequency identification (RFID), already is used in a wide variety of everyday applications such as the EZ Pass highway toll collection system. Using a process originally developed by the MIT Media Lab, MRI will begin testing whether RFID tags printed onto magazine pages can be used for magazine audience measurement.

The initiative is part of a deal MRI struck with TagSense, a Cambridge, Mass.-based technology company that was incubated at the Media Lab, which has developed the means of relaying data between printed RFID tags and electronic "readers" stationed nearby. Those readers could be stationed in retail outlets that sell magazines, or to a panel of magazine readers to measure when, where and for how long they are exposed to magazines and pages within magazines.

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MRI executives caution that the technology is far from deployment and will need a considerable amount of lab work before it even begins an internal test among "friends and family," but the magazine audience research firm said it could implement a "large scale" market trial of the technology in as soon as 18 months.

"We would hope to use the technology to measure exposure to individual magazine pages - not every page - but some individual pages," Jay Mattlin, vice president of new ventures at MRI. If successful, the technology promises to revolutionize the way magazine readership is measured in the same way that Arbitron's portable people meter system could alter the way radio, TV and potentially other media are measured. In its discussions with advertisers and agencies, Arbitron has indicated it might also incorporate RFID technology to measure print media as part of, or in conjunction with its PPM system, but MRI is the first research company to announce an explicit plan to do so.

MRI's Mattlin notes there are a number of potential obstacles that may limit the ability of RFID tags to be used for audience measurement, including the fact that data transmissions can be impacted by other radio signals being emitted in the proximity of the tags. But he described the technology as a breakthrough that could potentially alter the way print media are measured.

While RFID, like any electronic technology, requires electricity to operate, Mattlin said printed RFID tags could be "activated" via radio signals emitted by RFID readers they come in contact with.

Aside from audience measurement, the application suggests that printed media might find other ways of transmitting and receiving data that could make them far more interactive than current paper-and-ink publishers might have imagined. While magazine and newspapers publishers are aggressively pursuing a variety of electronic publishing formats - ranging from Web pages to digital editions that can be sent via email - new technologies like RFID may make it feasible to do it with old-fashioned pulp and pigments.

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