asi: ‘Don’t be seduced by opportunistic solutions from the digital world’

“Don’t be seduced by opportunistic solutions from the digital world,” RSMB managing director Steve Wilcox warned delegates at the asi 2011 European TV Symposium during the event’s main research session. “What sounds plausible on the surface may fall down in operation.”

Wilcox highlighted the lack of a single solution in aiming to fill the gaps in a TV audience measurement system. “Extending the TAM is necessary but not the complete solution… fusing server data (largely device counts not people counts) into a panel is not the right solution,” he said.

Wilcox’s warnings followed a measured and well received presentation from BARB CEO Bjarne Thelin, outlining the now well-chronicled plans for the UK’s measurement system and a thought-provoking 25 minutes from Joris Mercks, research manager at Google.

As ever, Google’s view of research raised questions and eyebrows. Mercks told of the seven single source panels -“more like TouchPoints panels than JICs, but with a lot more detail” – started because “the existing standards do not fulfil the cross-media demand sufficiently”.

Merks’ question of how to get market acceptance for these remained the key – and in a room full of experienced broadcast researchers it was not just Wilcox who cast doubts.

Google’s view of the future of TV also included two interesting nuggets. Merks forecast a hybrid TV world with a mixture of ad supported and paid-for programmes – ” TV will be different to music in terms of paying.”

He also prophesied that the majority of advertising in five to ten years would be “response-based because that delivers data”.

“Response based advertising is much more than just clicks,” he added, using True-View – Google’s skippable pre-roll – as an example. The advertiser only pays if the whole ad is watched, but the ad costs more if it is constantly skipped. “The advertiser is forced to make effective advertising.”