I take the bus every morning, and for some reason I’ve developed this habit of looking at people’s ears while I’m sitting there. No, I don’t have any creepy ear fetishes; I just like to see how many people are listening to iPods.

I’ve started to realize something. At least on my morning bus route, the vast majority of people who have the white earbuds dangling from their ears sit in the back of the bus. The people in the front are usually chatting with their friends, powdering their nose, or just staring blankly ahead. Nearly everyone in the back is listening to their iPod.

I’ve even started making a game of it. I call it “check-the-ears, predict-the-seat.” Ok, I don’t actually have a name for it, but I have found that if I look at a person’s ears when they get on the bus, I can usually predict if they’ll make their way to the back or dump themselves into the first available seat.

So who cares? Well, some day in the future I may be interested in throwing some ads up inside buses. The kinds of ads I want to put in there would specifically be targeted to iPod listeners. So, if I can get them into the back somewhere, at least if it were on Route #7, they’d probably be more effective.

DISCLAIMER: Although my data collection methods may seem foolproof, sitting on a bus and looking at people’s ears isn’t actually considered a scientific process. It’s probably not safe to base any million dollar ad campaigns off these findings quite yet.