A single online planning currency is absolutely necessary, particularly as most medium’s content distribution will be via the internet in the future, according to Louise Ainsworth, managing director for Nielsen//NetRatings, who was speaking from the floor at last week’s MediaTel Group ‘Future of Media Research’ seminar.
Ainsworth indicated that having come to research from an agency background, she initially did not understand why online required a currency, but has now turned a corner to clearly support the move towards this.
“Online should be right at the heart of what’s happening in measurement going forward,” she said.
She illustrated that because there was so much going on in the industry that it was now important to move on from the basic debate and get the currency in place so that things could move forward.
Panellist Richard Silman, non-executive chairman of Ipsos, agreed that online was a long way behind the other currencies. Although the other currencies may have issues, he said, they have a very clear starting point.
“Now what they need to do is move on and adapt to the changes that are happening,” he said, highlighting the complexity of the area of online measurement.
Ainsworth continued: “There are so many things that we can do, we just need to really find ways of progressing as an industry towards these things.” She also expressed the company’s support of the work of the JICIMS team, saying the body’s creation is a positive move that will raise the level of the debate.
David Brennan, research and strategy director at Thinkbox, said he was envious of JICIMS, in that online measurement functions would provide richer, deeper data through passive measurement and an online connection.
JICIMS will aim to address measuring the total picture of internet users and their usage patterns across all websites, and how it relates to their other daily media usage, said Lynne Robinson, research director at the IPA, who was also on the panel.
The new organisation will address the stumbling block for audience measurement on the internet, which has been audience centric measurement she indicated.
“You want to know not just how many page impressions you have but who are these people, what is the total picture of their internet usage across all websites and how does that relate to their other media usage in their daily lives,” she stated.
She also suggested that there were a wealth of benefits of having a joint industry committee to provide basic audience measurement, in terms of quality and cost control of the data.
Robinson also said there was great benefit of having one currency, acknowledging that the next step was seeing what kind of measurement the industry wanted and whether the industry was prepared to pay for it.
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