In yesterday’s Monitoring Media Performance conference delegates from all disciplines debated wide-ranging issues for the future of media monitoring. As media proliferation continues to grow the industry continues to strive for standards to monitor it.
Hugh Johnson, head of research at Channel 4, discussed the future of the BARB contract as the current one comes up for review, to be replaced in January 2002. Before then the industry must make decisions on how best to monitor television viewing in a multi-media age. Media planners must decide what is needed from a monitoring service in terms of coverage and frequency, attitudinal shifts and, eventually, sales, he said. He called for flexibility in the system and the possibility of collating data from more than one source to widen the range of research and take into account the multiplicity of television channels.
Tony Wearn, research director at BARB, took up some of the issues; he suggested increasing sample sizes to cover fragmentation. There was much on the agenda for an adequate system for the future he said; it must deal with issues such as the convergence of PC and TV, out-of-home viewing and hard disk retrieval of programmes. The challenge, he said, was to “maintain the integrity of current currency with current divergence”.
The monitoring of other media was taken up by Graham Duff, chief executive at Zenith Media. Press, he said was a much more disparate media to monitor, as it came in more shapes and sizes and less has been invested in it in terms of research and money.
The most pressing issue in the monitoring debate is, of course, the internet, which is, so far, more or less unaccountable. There are, however, a few monitoring systems already and US net monitors are drifting over to Europe; Media Matrix use a panel of 50,000 to measure second by second coverage.
Trying to measure net performance by “classical” methods will fail, Charlie Dobres, chief executive officer at i-level, pointed out. Demographics, for instance, are less of an issue online; interest, activity and mindset are more important, says Dobres. Distinctions between classified and display, so important in print, are also arbitrary. He said that with such a young technology mistakes are bound to be made and the barriers of fear and lack of talent in the area are holding back much research but progress is being made.
