MGEITF 2004: Audience Measurement Must Keep Up With Convergence

Established audience measurement surveys are in serious danger of becoming outdated unless they ditch their silo mentality and start working together to address the increasingly important issue of media convergence.

This is the view of Mick Mernagh, director of consumer insight at MediaCom, who claims that media owners could turn away from existing trading currencies if they fail to provide an accurate picture of how their products are consumed.

He said: “I would hate for loads and loads of different channels and magazines and radio stations to go off and do their own research. They would all come up with amazingly improved figures and would probably bury the one that they didn’t quite like the look of.”

Mernagh praised the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising for its recently launched TouchPoints survey, which has been created to help planners and buyers fill the gaps between the existing trading currencies used across the various different types of media (see IPA Unveils Single Source Media Planning Tool).

However, Mernagh called on the established audience measurement surveys, from BARB’s set-top meters to RAJAR’s diary system, to come together to reach all media sectors in a concerted effort to paint a true picture of what the consumer is doing.

He said: “From the point of view of a modern communications planning agency, silos of audience measurement do not actually make any sense, unless you have an understanding of what else is happening in the media world and what levels of engagement the consumer is faced with.”

However, BARB chief executive, Bjarne Thelin, argued that the idea of working with other audience measurement companies was problematic. He said: “I fully understand why advertising agencies would like a more connected system of audience measurement, but it’s a long-term ambition and is not very likely to be achieved in the short term. My own view is that it is more likely to be led by the technological convergence of the different types of media.”

He added: “It is a massive step because the measurement of different media is poles apart. BARB delivers minute by minute data on a daily basis and other media are working off monthly or quarterly data. Either television has got to step back and have less granularity in its data, or the other media have got to step forward to prevent a massive seismic shift.”

CNBC has already decided to drop its BARB subscription because it failed to effectively measure its smaller audiences. The business news channel now uses the GfK electronic measurement system, which gives it an audience eight times the size of that recorded under the BARB methodology.

BARB is working hard to keep up to date with the rapid development of the television industry and recently launched a new reporting system capable of measuring the sponsorship of television programmes following ongoing requests from advertisers and agencies (see BARB Begins Roll-Out Of Sponsorship Tracking System).

MGEITF: 020 7430 1333 www.mgeitf.co.uk

Recent Television Stories from NewsLine ITV Reveals Plans To Launch Range Of New Channels Mind-Numbing Reality Television Comes Under Fire Channel 4 Confirms Intention To Link With BBC

Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive