Future of Media Research: The JICs
Torin Douglas posed the question “how are the JICs coping?” at MediaTel’s Future of Media Research event on Friday.
Sarah Messer, head of commercial research & insight at ITV, was quick to respond – “I think they are coping admirably”. JICs are here to create robust audience measurements, and the continued call for JICs to be speedy and quick to respond is misleading, she said.
“First and foremost we need the survey data to be of a high quality and robust… The industry agrees that we can use the numbers so it is important that we continue to support them”, Messer added, before praising BARB for being the the first TV currency in the world to install web meters.
John Carroll (pictured), senior director at Ipsos MediaCT, echoed Messer’s view: “People always moan about [the JICs] being slow but by definition they are run by a committee and they have to oversee a huge investment. They have to be stable and robust.” Carroll was also positive about the overall running of the JICs, saying they are run by very passionate people who really care about the output and the commercial implications.
James Smythe, owner of Culture of Insight, broadly agreed and said: “The JICs priority is to protect their core service. They are essential to provide confidence in numbers that support the trading process… it would be the ‘wild west’ without them.”
Meanwhile, Jim Kite, strategic development director at Starcom MediaVest Group, commented from a client’s perspective. “Clients want simplicity,” he said. Kite went on to suggest that if the world changed and the demand for the trading currency was not the size of audience but more on an outcome based metric, then the JICs would have to adapt a great deal. “TV trading still demands reach and ratings but when it comes to effectiveness, they want outcome information,” Kite elaborated. “That’s when we might get into a wild west”.
The general consensus from the panel was that as long as trading currencies stay the same, JICs would be needed in the main part as they stand today.
From the floor Jerry Wright, chief executive of ABC, spoke about future developments around digital measurement and its fusion with existing JIC surveys. “UKOM is not a JIC. It is not as comparable or transparent and the individual industry constituents can’t change the terms of that. It seems people just accept analytics data without it going through an industry standard process,” he said.
Smythe defended, saying “UKOM is transparent… It is never going to be perfect but the industry looks at it very intensely, which like the JICs slows things down, so it is very much like a JIC”.
Panellist Chris Worrell, European research director at Specific Media, put some perspective behind the differences: “Digital is a bigger industry, it’s vast and there are numerous and very different types of stakeholders. So what is the role of a JIC?”.
Worrell continued that digital focuses on outcomes, outputs and effectiveness and the demand for this type of insight is moving offline too. “Clients want to know what worked, to see how all the elements join up,” he said. However, he admitted that this dynamic can be problematical sometimes – “it’s a tough gig to just be measured on outcomes!”.
Meanwhile, RAJAR’s Jerry Hill stated that “all of the JICs will spend time and money looking at what is happening in digital in their area but you can’t do everything. With reference to radio, audio streaming is small and internet listening is only 3-4%”.
Hill continued: “You have to figure out what the numbers mean and where the data comes from. You can’t have two disciplines not understanding each other’s business. Data is incomparable unless you agree on common standards.”
Half of all RAJAR respondents prefer to complete the survey online and Hill said giving them a choice is a positive thing. He also said online collection of research data can be cost effective but is not dramatically cheaper than offline methods.
From the audience, Roger Gane pointed out that the industry needs to be wary of continuing to beat down costs as this reduces quality. “There needs to be a mutual trust and a shared objective between research contractor and the JICs,” he said. Gane talked about the value in working together rather than following things slavishly to the detail in a contract.
Kite concluded that JICs will be around for a good time yet because they set the standards. Delivery of information does not necessarily have to be by the JICs but has to follow standards set by them. “JICs lord over everything – maybe this is a new role for them?,” he suggested.