Is Research Keeping Up?
Richard Windle, director, Ipsos Mori, looks at the current media research landscape and gives us his views…
The rapid pace of change in media consumption has placed increasing demands on how different media are measured. Indeed the take-up of multi-platforms presents new and real challenges when attempting to research fragmenting and diversifying markets. Erwin Ephron in his blog www.ephrononmedia.com has described this as “trying to count grains of sand with your fingers”. Arguably we should be trying to measure content, regardless of how it is delivered but this is not the way our industry contracts are structured.
So, what are we doing to address this?
Thinking ahead
The first step is to monitor the take-up of new technology. A vehicle that does this is the Ipsos MediaCT Technology Tracker, which is a monthly tracking study that has been run via face-to-face omnibus since 1997. It monitors the ownership and usage of technology items including; mobile phones, internet, broadband, digital TV and radio and MP3 players. Vital statistics are available across key demographics. This type of information is a starting point for understanding how the market is evolving – how people access media, the equipment they have and how they use it.
However exciting a new technology sounds, if no-one is using it it may not be worth the time and effort trying to measure it. In the early hype around the internet the ability to access content on the move using WAP was thought to hold a lot of potential. The early promise was not fulfilled and, arguably, it is only now that this is a serious medium that deserves to be measured – witness the initiatives by the mobile industry to establish an audience measurement system.
Making better use of industry surveys
Ideally the diversification in media behaviour could be measured simply by increasing the scope of our industry surveys. However, these were devised around single media with specific objectives in mind. There is a limit to the amount of data that can be collected from respondents, and these surveys were not intended to cope with cross media measurement. This is not to say that they cannot change. There are examples for all the industry contracts adapting to the changed environment.
RAJAR have started using online re-contact surveys to look at podcasters and those listening to the radio via the internet. Response rates are in line with expectations and results from early waves are consistent. The signs are that this will be a very effective way of identifying this particular niche audience. The added benefit to RAJAR is that it is using its own industry research as an establishment survey from which to identify subsets of respondents for re-interview who fall into a particular technology area.
The BARB Establishment Survey is adapting to changes in the broadcast environment by introducing interactive help screens for interviewers to help them identify particular types of television packages/platforms within the CAPI interview. Peoplemeters continue to increase in sophistication as the equipment in the home advances. At some point in the future the use of ‘return path data,’ collected at the point of transmission, may provide an alternative.
On the NRS, at the end of the CAPI interview, a self-completion questionnaire can be deployed to collect additional information. This will typically be given to respondents to fill in whilst the interviewer is packing up. It is an efficient way of collecting more detailed media consumption data and adds no real extra time to the survey process.
Postar, previously reliant on recall methods to measure exposure to roadside advertising, is investing in a new travel survey that uses the latest GPS technology. Incorporating data from transport operators and third parties will provide an integrated measurement system for the whole out of home medium.
An integrated measurement system?
Combining all these surveys into a single multi-media data collection vehicle is likely to prove impossible, especially as measurement systems for media like mobile and internet would need to be included, but these do not exist yet.
For the time being the IPA’s much acclaimed Touchpoints survey seems to be the best way forward. This collects cross-media data from a sample of respondents and, using fusion and other techniques, combines this ‘hub’ survey with data from the industry currencies themselves. The resultant database is the closest anyone has come to providing a multimedia planning tool. Whatever else happens the combination and fusion of data from different databases is likely to point the way forward in the future.
Ipsos Mori: www.ipsos-mori.com