Media Research Industry Must Take A More Holistic Approach To Measurement

The research industry needs to respond to the massive period of change currently underway in the media, shifting away from self-contained measurement currencies for each medium towards a more holistic and converged approach.

At this morning’s ‘Future of Media Research’ seminar, which was hosted by MediaTel Group, David Brennan (pictured), research and strategy director at Thinkbox suggested that as media convergence continues, the boundaries between the various methods of measurement need to be broken down.

“I think that media convergence is going to go way beyond expansion of one media into an online world – it’s more about actually getting rid of many of those boundaries all together,” he said.

He also pointed out that response rates were a major problem in the industry. “I don’t think there’s a single research methodology – whether it’s self-completion diaries, telephone interviewing or whatever – which can provide us these days with a totally representative national sample,” he said.

“There are large chunks of the population who simply do not want to be compliant with that form of research and it’s something we’ve got to get to grips with.”

The move to looking at both online and offline newspaper readership was a good step forward and an example of some of the efforts to expand and find the right approach, he explained.

Brennan also said that the industry had to get to grips with social and cultural developments, which were important to truly understand how consumers interact with the various media.

“A lot of the initiatives, a lot of the work that’s going on is perhaps tiptoeing around the edges a bit,” he remarked. “In terms of technology – not just in terms of media technology and the different ways people can access media now in so many different environments, but also the technologies we have available to us as a research industry to ask the most appropriate questions in the most appropriate ways, tying in with the lifestyles of those respondents rather than getting them to tie in to the methodologies that we approach,” he said.

Fellow panellist Brian Jacobs, founder of Brian Jacobs Associates, said that the silo approach was a “pretty fundamental and major problem” in the industry.

“The media industry has moved dramatically over the past 10-15 years from being a buying led business to being a planning led business,” he commented.

“Currencies remain critical, but the fact is that because of the explosion of choice and so on, the whole issue of planning is becoming fundamental. It’s no longer good enough really just to look at currencies in silos, medium by medium. You still need all of that and that’s fine, but I think we do need to focus a lot more on how we should go about measuring a much more holistic use of media and communications channels.”

Richard Silman, non-executive chairman of Ipsos, felt that it was an exciting time in the industry and that convergence was fascinating, particularly in relation to the coming together of the various bodies, such as NRS and JICIMS, RAJAR and BARB.

However, he did express a note of caution on response rates and the maintenance of data quality, following the impact of the increasing complexity of data capture such as large surveys. “We have to be mindful of the complexity of the task and the impact of this on the respondent,” he said.

“I do question what response rate overall you have from that respondent [if overloaded with paper diaries, phone interviews etc] and I can tell you it is very, very low. And at that point I start to question the validity of the data.”

Media journalist Ray Snoddy was more sceptical, saying there was a need for greater and better media measurement and that the silo approach to the planning of ad campaigns was not going to work.

“The old way simply does not work anymore,” he insisted. “This is more than just research, this is actually trying to get an integrated grip on how consumers react to all media and how that in turn reflects their buying decisions, and it’s only just starting.”

The fact that different approaches to research and measurement were just beginning is, according to Snoddy, the research industry’s “ultimate disgrace”.

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