MRG Conference: Media Research In A Changing World
Adele Gritten, research manager at PHD, warned delegates at the MRG Conference in Budapest that the dualistic explosion of technology and consumer diversity poses innumerable threats to the long-term future of the media research industry.
Gritten, the author of this year’s prize winning young person’s paper, argued that researchers need to “keep re-inventing the wheel” with innovative research tools, methods and models to analyse audience fragmentation, consumer loyalty and media habits in the rapidly changing environment.
She said that researchers need to be firmly versed in three specific research areas: consumer understanding, audience targeting and trading to give the best advice to clients. These, she argued, will be key in helping media research take its place at the top table.
Gritten defended researchers for providing reliable and credible information and expressed confidence in the fact that the industry has managed to resolve the issues it has faced in the past. However, she warned that the fragmentation of the market would make “standardisation” increasingly difficult and called for the industry to unite in preparation for the future.
She called on the MRG to broaden its appeal to become the “ambassador” of the media research industry by establishing a working party to discuss the introduction of an electronic multimedia metering system. This, she argued, would be the holy grail of media research.
After outlining the problems that different types of media would face over the next decade, Gritten suggested that the future holds a convergence between media and market research or, at the very least, a closer relationship between them. She argued that clients are demanding that their media partners provide measurable links between media spend and marketing objectives and that media research departments are “fated” to get more involved with sales and marketing objectives.
She concluded by saying: “The media research industry will ultimately have to change if it wants to keep a seat at the top table. If it doesn’t fight, its greatest critics and cynics will have no qualms in relegating it to the kitchen.”
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