There are several questions raised by the Persona Radio concept.
In its report, iBiquity discusses how the station might determine its criteria for substituting spots, for example, whether by age, geo-location (such as home or work) or Zip code. The Persona Radio concept allows the station to set up basic parameters to create a micro-demo of its audience, iBiquity’s Joe D’Angelo told me.
In one example of how the concept might be implemented, a user could go into “My Profile” on the device, type in a Zip code and see targeted advertising, stored in the radio’s memory. If the consumer clicks on a text ad, for example, it would generate a “QR” or Quick Response code that can be scanned by a retailer and act as an electronic coupon.
NAB’s David Layer, the project manager for FASTROAD, says this project can be seen as a follow-on to the new, upgraded Insignia HD portable radio because it’s a way of offering new features.
Possible profiles discussed in the report include substituted content targeted to a 40-year-old female or a 40-year-old male, both with content choices in English or Spanish, teens and special “birthday” content.
FASTROAD has other projects cooking.
I wrote that FASTROAD released an iBiquity report two weeks ago on HD Radio Single-Frequency Network Interim Field Test Results. FASTROAD is conducting testing on HD boosters and asymmetrical sideband transmission.
Layer tells me it plans to release an engineering analysis of technology for a low-bit-rate data service for analog AM to enjoy some of the IBOC-based receiver display capabilities of HD Radio tuners. We wrote earlier that iBiquity had delivered its report on this technology to NAB by the Radio Show convention.
