Abstract: Portable audience measurement architectures and methods for portable audience measurement are disclosed. A disclosed system contains a plurality of portable measurement devices configured to collect audience measurement data from media devices, a plurality of data collection servers configured to collect audience measurement data from the plurality of portable measurement devices, and a central data processing server. A portable measurement device establishes a communication link with a data collection server in a peer-to-peer manner and transfers the collected audience measurement data to the data collection server. Because the portable measurement device is not dedicated to a particular local data collection server, the portable measurement device periodically or a periodically broadcasts a message attempting to find a data collection server with which to establish a communication link.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus to collect audience information associated with a media presentation are described herein. In an example method, the presence of one or more other media metering devices is monitored by a first media metering device associated with a media presentation device. A monitoring operation of the first media metering device is varied based on a presence of the one or more other media metering devices.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus to adaptively gather audience information data are disclosed. The disclosed methods and apparatus monitor system factor(s) and select one or more sensors from a plurality of sensors positioned to gather audience measurement data based on the monitored factor(s). Thus, the disclosed methods and apparatus adapt to the conditions they face by selecting an amount and/or type of audience measurement data they gather.