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The Portable People Meter, or PPM, is a device developed by Arbitron to measure how many people are listening (or exposed) to radio, TV, cable, etc., and to which stations their radios or TVs are tuned. The PPM device detects hidden audio tones within a station or network's audio stream, and the PPM logs each time it finds such a signal. It has proved to be much more accurate than the old handwritten logs, immune to forgetful test subjects, totally passive, and completely anonymous. It will soon be used to trigger changeable billboards to move to an advertisement most likely to influence the people currently looking at it, by matching that ad's target demographic with the people most likely to be listening to the station the PPM finds to be most popular at any given time.
