Should media research move entirely online?
Media research should ditch paper questionnaires and move wholly online, according to Nick Hiddleston, worldwide research director at ZenithOptimedia.
Citing increased costs, low response rates and high UK internet penetration, Hiddleston said it was now entirely natural to see survey work move completely into the digital space.
“In Europe, 33 countries have an internet penetration greater than 60%. For [ZenithOptimedia], when we do online work, 60% is our benchmark…but so many countries now have extremely high internet penetration,” Hiddleston said, noting that in the UK the figure is at 80% and rising.
This, Hiddleston told an audience at the 2014 Future of Media Research conference on Monday, is the catalyst for changing the way media research is carried out in the UK.
Hiddleston also noted the growing expense of research, which he said was partly attributable to low response rates, and said that major studies had to submit tens of thousands of questionnaires to cope with low take-up or unusable material.
“When the internet penetration of a country is at 80%, let’s have 80% of the survey online and 20% on paper,” Hiddleston said.
Hiddleston also said that major research agencies, including Kantar and IpsosCT, plan to move surveys entirely online in future.
However, others have warned that there are “significant pitfalls” in pursuing an online only research strategy.
Jerry Hill, chief executive of Rajar, the audience research body for UK radio, said that although online has a number of benefits, it is only truly suited to customer and marketing research if not used alongside more robust studies.
“If you’re talking about getting an industry audience measurement currency, then I think there are limitations and barriers [to purely online].
“We need to be clear about which bit of the online world works, and which bit doesn’t before making generalisations.”
Hill’s comments were supported by Julian Dobinson, insight and research director at BSkyB, who said that he too sees the benefits to online research, such as speed and response rates, “but to move everything online would probably be a mistake,” he said.
“Certainly in terms of measuring the entirety of the UK – because the 20% [that is not online] is no way going to be represented by the 80% that are.”
Other industry experts have spoken of concerns over the quality of online research more generally.
Richard Marks, managing director of Research the Media, said there is a growing issue regarding the decline in the volume of face-to-face methodologies performed in the UK – with currently only the Joint Industry Councils producing any.
Marks likened the situation to consumer fears some years ago over mobile phone use and radiation – joking that as soon as smartphones arrived everyone decided to forget about such concerns in a “near conspiracy of silence”.
“I think online research is the same. The advantages, in terms of cost and ease of doing it, mean, to a certain extent, major research agencies and the MRS [Market Research Society] almost waved it through in terms of respectability – when a hell of a lot of it isn’t respectable and isn’t representative.”
At a trading currency level, Marks pointed out, even a 0.5% difference would have a huge impact – firmly arguing that the quality and trust in research can only be backed up with more “traditional” methods.
The UK media industry currently uses Joint Industry Councils to manage trading currencies across all media channels, with over £15 billion traded each year.
Marks also warned that the industry now faced increasing “polarisation” between high quality, face-to-face research and passive data – with online “stuck in the middle”.
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