I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it

What do other audience measurement bodies think about newspaper publishers serving notice on the National Readership Survey? We hear from Route’s MD, James Whitmore, for an out-of-home perspective.

It’s like The Inbetweeners. When ambushed by flatulence, stare accusingly at the person next to you. We are talking about the National Publishers Association (NPA) who have served notice on the NRS (National Readership Survey).

All JICs have a problem in dealing with the longer term. Funding is under pressure as the media owners, the main benefactors, face both diminishing revenues and a lengthening list of data sources that require their attention. It makes the speculative funding of R&D a very difficult sell.

There are other drags on innovation too. In devising new metrics, participants will want to be certain that the new benchmark is one that they can beat – logically not everyone can do this and it takes time to convince all parties that new measures will not lead to a fall in revenue.

It can result in compromises that blunt the potential of the innovation. In rare cases, companies can stonewall innovation whilst simultaneously seeking an advantage by adopting the very same idea themselves – which of course immediately kills it for everyone else.

At Route, we have identified five areas that variously have the potential to either enhance or replace what we do in the future. In no particular order they are:

– Taking the existing research of moving images (e.g. digital displays) to the next level
– Exploring the benefits and limits of mobile data
– Utilising new sources of count data
– Investigating the options to track movements in enclosed, predominantly underground, spaces. What we call “assisted GPS”
– Considering advances in mapping and map infrastructure, such as 3D digital plans

Whilst we work through the list and learn the opportunity that each of the projects might present, it is an inescapable fact that we are unlikely to be able to implement all of them, as the cost will prove prohibitive. But at the very least, we should be able to quantify the benefit of each initiative so that the industry can make an informed choice.

Which brings me back to the NRS. Much has been written about the matter, yet it is difficult to know exactly what the ambition might be. If it is to receive data in a timelier manner then there must be an appetite and the resource to cope with yet more information. If it is to enumerate “engagement”, the question is, engagement with what? Do we mean the newspaper brand or the ads?

I’ll take the last point, as it is one that I have yet to see any comment on. There is considerable evidence of a link between the amount of time an advertisement is fixated by the viewer and the chance that the message will be remembered.

Therefore one option might be to take a leaf from the book of outdoor measurement and investigate the issue of visibility, by which I mean the evidence that a reader fixated on the advertisement.

There is a surprising amount of research in this area, quite conveniently summarised in a recent essay by Emily Higgins et al and published in the journal, Frontiers in Psychology. The paper reviews the work on eye movement when viewing advertisements. It covers print, online and TV. As such, it is an excellent primer on the subject.

For newspapers, it is not a surprise that large ads are more viewed than small ones. It may be less known that small ads return a greater number of fixations per unit of area. Colour ads are more fixated than those in black and white. Also, colour ads are seen sooner. (Not unlike out of home, where digital displays attract the eye earlier than static ones.)

Ads placed to the left of text are often ignored, as are those positioned toward the end of a page. Clutter matters in press. Pictures help when there is lots of competition on the page. Conversely, ads shown in isolation will benefit from an element of text to draw the eye. Repetition produces diminishing returns; the first viewing results in the most fixations.

None of these points will shock anyone in our industry. The point is that each of them is measurable and therefore a possible contributor to the elusive concept of engagement.

The way the eye works is not culturally determined, therefore it is possible to amortise the cost of such research over a number of markets.

There is, however, a sting in the tail for publishers with an online presence. Using the same techniques for visibility research, ads on websites offer fairly dismal returns. “Banner blindness” is a quantifiable notion. Fewer than 12% of ads on screen and in view are ever fixated.

Taking the point further, if the eyes are trained to ignore online ads, is the medium simply, for want of a better description, one of direct response? And if for the “newsbrands” it is akin to the classified ads in newspapers, then why do you need a readership or engagement metric? Classified lives and dies by its ability to produce a return, not by any readership metric.

The problem for the media owners is that the agencies turn a better profit by doing many other things than they do by being smart about newspapers. The agencies have very little money at risk. But if new data are to take root, whatever the solution turns out to be, then the buyers may need to be convinced of an economic reason to take it seriously.

Which leads me to my final point: are JICs too important to be left exposed to the caprices of their partners?

For each of them, the funding model places much of the burden on the media owners. True, they have most money at risk, yet at the same time, they are the group least likely to create a striking vision of the future. How could they? They compete tooth and nail. Consensus, when it eventually arrives, will necessarily be buried in the middle of a blancmange.

One option is to take the funding pressure away. A “tax” on all advertising of a fraction of a penny in every pound would create a fund for audience research. In effect, the clients pay, which would flip the debate from how to sell things to what is needed to convince someone to buy them. (By the way, I should stress that none of the funders of Route support this personal view.)

Administrative difficulty aside, it seems to me that a stable pot of cash, predictable in the long-term, and a representative body of trusted souls could not only manage the day-to-day, but critically invest in the long-term and R&D in a way that the existing politics often prevents.

Representatives from all sides of the industry might get to a holier place; be it “real time” data, super-JICs or whatever else floats your boat, somewhat sooner than the status quo.

See also: New NRS chief speaks out on the survey’s future