Integration finally rules
Lynne Robinson, research director, IPA, says the communication landscape is changing at a faster rate than ever before; but fortunately these changes are also delivering the means to gain a greater understanding of what is going on…
After many years of paying lip service to integrated campaigns, the need to effectively manage integration is now fundamentally changing the way that advertisers, agencies and media owners operate and is dictating the organisational structures and skill sets needed to deliver effective multi-media campaigns.
As if putting the icing on the cake, the IPA has recently published the report, New models of marketing effectiveness: From integration to orchestration, based on a rigorous analysis of the IPA’s Effectiveness Awards databank of case histories, which demonstrates that multi-media campaigns are more effective than single media campaigns.
For the past five years, IPA TouchPoints has been providing a consumer-centric, time based dataset, which underpins the planning of integrated campaigns plus a multi-media channel planner, allowing planners and buyers to evaluate coverage and frequency achievement across integrated campaigns. It is also being augmented by the industry currencies that feed into it, which are expanding their measurement systems to include the digital/online consumption of their specific medium.
TouchPoints is now being used by over 60 media companies (agencies, advertisers and media owners) in the UK, TouchPoints USA is being launched next month and the TouchPoints approach is being emulated /tested in many countries around the world. Agencies and media owners are also developing their own bespoke integrated measurement tools to address specific client needs; the new Google Initiative of a joint television, mobile and digital panel in 3000 broadband homes is of particular note.
However, as the number of media touchpoints increase, the accountability of multi-media campaigns grows increasingly more complex. This is currently being exponentially fuelled by the advent of the mobile internet, which provides easy and cheap access to media content in situations where people could not be previously reached. So, how are we going to evaluate this ever more complex communications landscape in the future? As is often the case, the answer can be found alongside the problem – in this case the growth of smartphones.
TouchPoints is already experimenting in migrating its e.diary from being PDA-based (itself an innovation in 2005) to being app-based. This would enable respondents to download the TouchPoints diary app onto their own smart phones, which would then allow the data to be transmitted back in real time.
In addition to completing the life/media diary, the pilot is also trialling the collection of passive data from the respondents’ smart phones – i.e. location and movement, communication tools used, browser behaviour, application behaviour, media created and used etc, plus the possibility of interacting in real time with the respondent.
Beyond this, the smartphone can also act as a passive listening device, similar to the Personal Portable Meter devices, recognising television and radio broadcasts from identifiers embedded in the audio streams of the broadcasts. The PPMs have struggled to gain acceptance in the past due to respondent compliance issues, that is, respondents often did not carry the devices with them. However, smart phones have no such issues; they are rapidly becoming an essential life tool – a recent study recorded that 91% of all smart phone users kept them with them at all times – meaning the possibilities for their use in monitoring how people live their lives and the role media plays in it are endless.
The communication landscape is changing at a faster rate than ever before; fortunately these changes are also delivering the means to gain a greater understanding of what is going on – the next challenge is getting respondents to give us permission to do this…
For further information about TouchPoints click here or for information about how to subscribe, contact: lynne@ipa.co.uk