Single Source Data – The Holy Grail?

Jo Hamilton, head of audience measurement at the BBC, told delegates at ASI’s 2007 European TV Symposium in Barcelona, of the BBC’s 360 degrees Pulse survey – an attempt by the corporation “to deliver single source data for this converging world.”

Her pragmatic reflection, that, even with the BBC’s resources, “miraculous powers would be needed” to achieve this fully, shows the difficulty that the media research industry faces going forward – and is also another pat on the back for TouchPoints (see TouchPoints: Vision Vs Practice), which has got as close as anything so far.

The BBC panel, managed by GfK, was based around online questionnaires completed for five to seven minutes per day daily plus a summary 10 minutes at the end of the week. Media measured included the top 100 websites, but Hamilton felt only the top 20 delivered data robust enough and that this might only be after three months. “Is that quick enough?” she mused.

For the BBC the data gave the opportunity to look at, for instance, the favourite programmes of Facebook users; to aid cross-trailing opportunities; measure appreciation across different platforms and measure multi-platform consumption of some programmes.

So the research was clearly helpful but Hamilton felt the UK was still 10 years away from some form of single source industry contract. “The BBC still needs and firmly believes in industry data, but industry measurement is struggling to keep up,” she concluded.

ASI: www.asi.eu.com