A great time to be in media research – IF you like challenges!
How often do we all listen to the latest taxpayer-funded research report on the radio over breakfast; sigh deeply and curse… “could have told them that for free”.
In all walks, an inordinate amount of time and energy seems to get spent on researching solutions that observers may think will never come to fruition… could never in some cases. In fact the guys on the inside charged with doing the research must sometimes think the same too.
The media research industry is grappling with a number of these issues right now. For instance, can RAJAR come up with a new way of collecting data that will still manage to gather key breakfast viewing (clever watches didn’t seem to be the answer largely because we don’t put our watches on the second we get up – let alone in bed whilst listening to the radio). Or, can BARB find a reliable means of mopping up the (very small, but growing) amount of viewing data not collected currently – neatly summarised by BARB CEO, Bjarne Thelin as “beyond 7 days and beyond the TV screen.”
The BBC has just such goals too of course and – whilst BARB investigates – it has announced a Plus7 project to come up with net total figures for a programme whatever the platform, and beyond the current BARB data – yet actually still largely based on BARB data.
If you are a bit confused now, and you are in a need-to-know role then click here now and sign up to join Bjarne and a very distinguished panel who understand these issues much better than me at our annual Future of Media Research seminar next Friday – sponsored by Toluna. The themes under discussion are probably more interesting and wide-ranging than on any previous occasion.
But – short commercial over – the bigger picture here is not a BARB or a RAJAR issue, but an industry one. To pull together industry-approved (ie trustworthy and credible) datasets that provide a complete picture for agencies and their clients is going to require experimentation, investment and quite possibly an unusual amount of cross-industry, and cross-media co-operation. Challenging.