IPA TouchPoints solves cross media measurement ‘issue’

In response to Brian Jacob’s article – Cross media measurement has been an issue for as long as I can remember – Belinda Beeftink, associate director, media research at the IPA, says the TouchPoints survey goes a long way to understanding what the consumer is doing across all media…

“Of course Brian is correct when he says ‘the way forward is to sell audiences online’ and he asks for ‘commonality in the way in which those audiences are defined, on to offline’. Surely the way round this is to understand what the consumer is doing across all media.

None of us consume media these days in isolation. We read newspapers, watch telly, listen to the radio and go online regularly each day – we are exposed to all of these media opportunities. So the trick is then, to better understand the how and the why of this consumption across the day and the week.

Brian said that ‘measurement of cross media campaigns has been an issue for as long as (he) can remember’. The IPA has worked some way to resolving this issue with the IPA TouchPoints survey, which is a consumer centric piece of research that delivers a cross media planning database.

It does allow us to understand audiences better and specifically how they use different media channels at different times of the day and for different reasons. Undoubtedly this helps from both the media buyer and seller point of view. TouchPoints has been available to the market since March 2006 and is now in its third iteration.”