People who fear numbers are said to suffer from numerophobia or arithmophobia. There are even those who fear specific numbers like number 7 (heptaphobics) or number 13 (triskaidekaphobics). Audience measurement is a discipline swimming in numbers and, with the emergence of Big Data to supplement or even replace more traditional survey approaches in many cases, now throws out even more numbers.
We are entering the Fifth Age of Audience Measurement. It is an age where methodologies are being re-calibrated in response to a fast-changing media environment and where the quest for total understanding of audiences is higher than it has ever been. It is also an era where politics and economics are far greater barriers to progress than technical concerns.
