White Paper On Audience Measurement
A White Paper setting out the requirements for “harmonisation of audience measurement in Europe” has been drawn up by the European Association of Advertising Agencies.
The document – “One Europe – One Media Currency”, presents the conclusions of a television and press working party under the respective chairmanships of Grey’s Alexander Schmidt-Vogel and Leo Burnett’s Brian Jacobs, with Dr Toby Syfret as project director.
The EAAA represents about 1,500 full- service agencies and agency assocat- ions in Europe, with combined billings of around ECU 33,000m. For achieving the right currency, the EAAA holds to five principles of organisation:
* All national audience measurement must be administered through joint industry control of the three primary users: media owners, advertisers and agencies.
* The methodology must be open to inspection.
* Primary users should have the freedom to make the data available to secondary users, such as software bureaus and research companies.
* Primary users must have unrestricted access to all data used for the buying and selling of media time and space….
* All research must satisfy nationally agreed norms of quality control and validation. More than this, the EAAA wants progress towards international norms.
With regard to television, the aims of harmonisation go beyond the comparabil- ity of measures. They include:
– Common currency of measurement
– Shared language of research – Rapid data transfer across borders
– Optimisation and progress
The EAAA looks forward to the day when a buyer or seller can call up data from a range of European countries in a common format on his screen. At the moment, two basic definitions of viewing exist: in the room with the set on or, in the room with the set on watching.A single definition is needed.
National research techniques that meter set use and meter individual viewing “provide unrivalled accuracy and fine- ness of detail and discrimination.”
The EAAA has identified fourteen points of standardisation for the sake of one currency and one language: Sampling – Universe definition
– Panel selection
– Panel size and definition
– Demographic classification Data Input
– Monitoring of set activity
– Individual viewing records
– Meter sensitivity
– Other data Data Storage And Processing
– Definition and calculation of viewing ratings
– Other measures
– Weighting Data Output
– Norms of reporting
– Reporting formats
– Language
With regard to press measurements, the goals of a single European market require the convergence of measures innational media research.
The three basic requirements of national readership research are:
– Single currency of measurement
– Sufficiency of the data to meet the needs of the primary users
– Sound data
The reliance of contemporary readership research on survey interviews involving human recognition and recall rules out the exact standardisation of currency as a realistic goal for the press.
Rather,the goal is closer comparability through the progressive approximation of national measures…. It is also important to distinguish between the short term priorities of the advertising industry for comparable data and the enduring need for greater precision and accuracy of readership measurement.
There is already quite close correspondence between national concepts of readership measurement. This encourages the EAAA to think that the short term priorities for compar- able data can be met without requiring major changes in national methods of research.
The short term priorities which the EAAA has identified are:
– Common universe definitions
– Common demographic classifications
– Common definitions of average issue readership
– Common norms of reporting
– Common time periods for collecting and reporting data
For the longer term, the EAAA seeks closer approximation of national measures. The ideal is to register the exposure of readers to individual ads, and hence their opportunities to see them. Current measures fall far short of this ideal. Hence the enduring need for the development and trial of more diagnostic and accurate measures. The main longer term goals and enduring needs, which the EAAA has identified, are:
– Approximation of national measures contributing towards schedule construction
– Approximation of survey techniques
– Experimentation with more qualified measures