Funding Audience Measurement

Audience measurement is one of those topics that creates a great deal of heat and light amongst a specialist subset of the industry Audience researchers toil away mainly unnoticed by the rest and yet what they do is essential to the whole media ecosystemMost of us on the periphery of the subject would agree with two core principlesIt39s important to measure audiencesIt39s important to do it properlyquotProperlyquot includes remaining objective and producing data that is acceptable to users is verifiable and is accessibleIt seems obvious for insector competitors to collaborate So in the case of TV the major broadcasters come together in BARB in the UK to the benefit of allBut we are now in a world where the key players in what is now video include but extend way beyond traditional broadcasters And so far many of these major players haven39t felt the need to collaborateWe39re coming out of the monochrome siloed world within which each medium is measured separately to a technicolour world of integrated communication working across multiple channelsAudience measurement needs to keep pace or more accurately to catch up hence the flurry of activity around crossmedia measurementThe problem is that this creates an obvious funding challengeWithin siloes it39s natural for the medium to fund research into its audienceThis research is primarily about currencies amp8211 and thus as the name suggests about buying and sellingProviding data for planning purposes has largely been outside the purview of the audience measurement systems When the media business was all about buying and selling that was good enoughTrading and currencies remain important of course but there is a gap when it comes to deciding between as opposed to within channelsFor over 50 years that gap has been manfully filled by the TGI but even TGI media data has been weighted to the currenciesThere39s a need to move forward to reflect today39s multicomms worldThe obvious group to fund this advance are those who will benefit from the output and that means the advertiserBut who Which advertisersAt the asi event earlier this month Sarah Mansfield from Unilever was clear or clearish quotWe are very much willing to lead from the front in terms of governance and funding and be actively involved going forwardquot she saidI wouldn39t bank that quite yetSarah didn39t actually commit to funding anything Indeed when asked a more specific question on funding from Kantar39s Margo Swadley she ducked it and passed it along to ISBA39s Richard Halton who was equally vague on any specificsThis is in no way unexpected I would be surprised delighted but surprised if the funding conversation with individual advertisers has moved beyond the conceptualI39ve argued here and on stage at last year39s asi for a levy on adspend to fund crossmedia audience researchThat way the largest advertisers pay the most but everyone contributes Going cap in hand to the usual suspects the ULs the CocaColas the PampampGs is unreasonable After all why should they shoulder the total burden to deliver something that will hopefully become embedded in how the whole industry worksI don39t buy the argument that says that this somehow denudes the agencies of the competitive edge gained by an investment in proprietary research and tools They can still do what they do but with the added benefit of another base sourceThe levy would pay for setting up and running the base crossmedia measurement system It would cover the cost of a small team at the advertiser trade body along with whatever original work was decided upon and maybe a small amount of ongoing RampampD into new techniques and approaches the measurement of attention might be one suchA levy would place advertisers at the heart of moving audience measurement into the new integrated comms ageIt would help bring advertising and other communication methods together through a planning methodology that ultimately would save money by reducing duplication and discouraging inconsistenciesAdvertisers have long called for such an approach This would be a giant step towards facilitating itFor all funded by allClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Funding Audience Measurement

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Brian Jacobs

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Funding Audience Measurement

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