An opportunity for cross-industry collaboration

Speaking at MediaTel’s Future of Media Research seminar this morning, James Whitmore, managing director of POSTAR, suggested there is a real opportunity for the industry to look at collecting research more collaboratively, using technologies such as mobile phones.

“We could bring together different techniques to get an overall picture – there is no single answer with one survey,” he said.

Picking up on a response from the floor that respondents might be overloaded with research requirements, Whitmore suggested that technology would allow some of this data to be collected passively via a mobile.

“The industry needs to think more intelligently” – a mobile has “ears” that could pick up radio listening or TV viewing, and could potentially allow users to scan the newspaper they buy or monitor other media consumption, he said.

“It is bonkers that we don’t think about the bigger picture and broader industry research,” he continued.

“I am not talking about a super JIC, just a central data pot… there are economies to be had.” A pool of ‘media habits’ data gathered could be dipped into by a number of surveys including the JICs, most probably to sit alongside some of their own data, Whitmore added.

However, Roger Gane was uncertain that this idea had legs. “I disagree,” he said. “Individual media have enough to do without expanding further than that.”