The NRS is to take an increasingly web based approach to readership measurement according to NRS chairman Simon Marquis, speaking at yesterday’s MediaTel Group ‘Future of National Newspapers’ seminar.
Marquis said that not only is the NRS currently measuring publishers websites, with the data to become available by early next year, but it is also developing self-completion questionnaires that can be filled in online.
Marquis said that the on-screen questionnaire will be more user friendly and will allow respondents to complete it in their own time, with the ability to include different types of questions. He contrasted this with the current method of using face-to-face questionnaires, which he admitted is “rather slow”, although he claimed that the care taken with data, and the resulting lack of speed, was one of the things that went into making it a “gold standard” for the industry.
He added: “The most interesting thing that we’re doing is this development of a web-based approach to it. I’ve got to believe that if I really look far forward in all of this, that the web and online research techniques will be the future of looking up estimates. It’s just a question of how long it takes us to actually get to that point.”
Marquis was adamant that the move to digital, when it occurs, will open up a whole new vista in which the NRS can operate. “What I think is interesting and exciting about this move into an online space is the variety of different things that we’ll be able to do. We’ll just be able to move much more quickly.
“Let me give you an example; in the case of the free London papers, if they wanted to ask supplementary questions about a particular strand of content that they run, we can bung that into a sample of people on the web when we get to that point. We can get almost instant feedback on it and that’s something we’ve never ever been able to do with the existing tried and tested methodology of the NRS.
“In the magazine area, think of the things that you could do testing different covers and so on which you can bung in front of your respondents and get instant feedback on them. This, I think, opens up huge possibilities for the NRS, not just for the survey itself, but other stuff that the NRS could get behind and offer to the market place as additional services.”
However, Ian Clark, general manager at News International’s thelondonpaper, said, “whether or not newspapers are dead, the NRS is barely breathing”, adding that while he welcomed these new initiatives, it was a bit “too little, too late”.
The overall mood then, was that whilst the NRS is definitely moving in the right direction, particularly with the use of self-completion questionnaires, it must continue apace if it is to remain the gold standard for readership measurement.
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