Publishers told they’re holding back on cross-platform data
Despite the National Readership Survey providing the fist major trading currency to successfully fuse digital and print data, publishers are holding industry back by failing to reveal the entire audience picture, a leading researcher has said.
Speaking at the Future of Media Research conference on Monday, Geoff Copps, research director at Mediabrands UK, said the setback was becoming disruptive for agencies who needed to understand cross platform metrics not in the future or the past, but in the present.
“NRS is the first major currency to really successfully achieve a fusion [of data] across online and print,” Copps said. “However, there are a few reasons why the full data picture has not yet come to fruition.
“The first problem is a revenue issue,” he said. “We’re talking about melding digital data into print data and the truth is, publishers have lots of different revenue models for their digital arms, and as such have different metrics priorities. Therefore it’s hard to achieve consensus.”
This was compounded by what Copps described as a “relational” issue – stating that the relationship of all other media to digital is different for press in that the sector is seeing a more “definitive migration” to online which puts “much more at stake” for newsbrands.
Copps, who previously held a senior research role at The Daily Telegraph, also said there was an overarching “issue of confidence”.
“There’s lots of talk about creating a ‘growth story’ to show how, with the migration to online, the audience is growing and growing,” he said. “That’s fine, but that’s not the only way in demonstrating you are relevant.
“Agencies want to know what’s happening here and now. The future is more of a strategic business issue, the past is the past. [Agencies] want to know what’s going on now and we need those cross platform metrics to deliver for clients.”
The debate has also raised issues of trust, in which some agencies believe that publishers are too concerned about “becoming commoditised” if the full set of cross-platform figures are revealed.
However, Copps said that agencies want to be able to take the true picture to clients and “elevate” the planning conversation to a “higher strategic level” – and ultimately it is the “job of the publisher to showcase the options and facilitate the debate.”
Responding, Ozoda Muminova, deputy head of commercial insight at the Guardian, said although NRS-PADD was a “great move forward” it only shows data for half of the newsbrand’s audience in the UK because consumers now engage with so much content on mobile.
The issue, Muminova said, was that the measurement industry was so far behind the consumer.
“We need to measure audiences, not platforms, ” she said. “We need a new metric for new media.”
Muminova said the Guardian was now using a new initiative, partly based on TouchPoints, called ‘Audiences not Platforms‘, which gives agencies the chance to take their audience and then match it to either print, mobile, tablet or desktop.
Likewise, The NRS has confirmed plans to introduce mobile and tablet readership measurement to NRS PADD during 2014. The additional data will show publishers’ total brand reach, in combination with the estimates for reading in print and on PC websites already published.
To find out more about MediaTel events, visit the dedicated web-page.