Mediatel and BARB renew partnership for Adrian Edwards award

Mediatel and BARB have agreed to renew their partnership for The Adrian Edwards Award for Best Use of Datsets at the Mediatel Research Awards.

The accolade, which is dedicated to the best use of a combination of data sets to meet a business challenge, was renamed in Edwards’ honour last year and is one of the Awards’ most popular categories.

Edwards, the UK managing director of media software company TechEdge, died aged 44 in May 2021 from cancer.

For the second year, Mediatel and BARB will give the award winner a £1,000 bursary towards training for the next generation of media researchers. All entry fees to this category will be donated again to bibic, a children’s charity chosen by Edwards’ family.

The award is dedicated to the best use of a combination of datasets to meet a business challenge. This can cover ‘big data’, server data, user databases, client databases, return path data or sales data, fusions between them or hybrid approaches.

The data could be used exclusively to deliver insight or integrated with survey research. The emphasis should be on the methods used to bring the sources together to produce insights and on the value delivered as a result.

Channel 4’s head of advertising research and development, Martin Greenbank, told The Media Leader that he and contemporaries from ITV, Sky, Thinkbox, and BARB originally wanted to create an “unsung data hero award”, such is the affection and respect they had for Edwards.

Watch Greenbank talk about judging the 2022 awards and how broadcasters came together to create to commemorate ex-TechEdge boss, Adrian Edwards.

There are 16 categories showcasing outstanding research, including the special Grand Prix award, with details on each category and how to apply available on the dedicated website.

Mediatel is the parent company for The Media Leader and provides data, content and software solutions to the media industry, working with the UK’s largest advertising players in the business.