Even though we share the same street, the household across the road is pretty different from mine.

While I reside in a three-floor rental house with young couples occupying almost every floor, across the street lives an elderly couple. Members of our house hustle in and out during all hours with work and social plans. The couple across the street often spends days sitting on the porch watching grandchildren.

And while the addresses of the two houses may be close, you can be sure the spending habits and lifestyles are not.

Right now, both households get the same flyers, but if the one-year-old Toronto-based Flyer Distribution Standards Association (FDSA) has its way, one day distribution could become so targeted that only the relevant ads land on our respective doorsteps. The first step toward that elusive goal, though, is coming up with an effective, independent and reliable method of measuring exactly what flyers are reaching what households right now.

To that end, the FDSA, established to create a unified voice for the $1.3-billion-a-year flyer medium, launched a test this past spring through NFO's CF Group (previously Canadian FACTS, the Toronto firm that collects raw newspaper data for NADbank and magazine numbers for PMB).

The test was conducted in two markets, Ottawa and Peterborough, from mid-April to mid-May.

The two markets were chosen for specific reasons: Ottawa is a larger urban market served by three different flyer carriers (the Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa Pennysaver and Transcontinental Distribution's AdBag), while Peterborough is a smaller rural market.

Over the four weeks, participants in a total of roughly 150 households were asked to note in a diary whenever a flyer from one of 26 participating retailers crossed their doorsteps.

Gillian Humphreys, VP of NFO, says it's important to note that thanks to the use of a diary, the project will produce more reliable data than a simple survey. "It doesn't rely on people's memories," she says. "Asking people what flyers were delivered to their homes even yesterday is not very reliable. We're not asking them for their opinions on anything. It's just a straight record of what happened."

The FDSA says it's too early to release summary results (they will be announced at its annual general meeting Sept. 19 in Toronto, along with sample numbers on Canadian Tire flyer distribution), but preliminary findings have already highlighted three areas where improvements can be made.

The first is the timeliness of flyer delivery. Flyers are very time sensitive, often being delivered to houses just 24 hours before the big sale they're touting begins. It's very difficult to get that timing just right, says Peter Martin, president of Toronto-based flyer distributor Geomedia and chair of publicity for the FDSA, because vehicles like community papers only go out on certain days, and the loose network of delivery people is tough to monitor.