Audience Measurement, Day One: Catching Up to the Changing Consumer

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Audience Measurement 3.0 looks at how to measure media usage as the pace of technological change accelerates.

There’s been plenty of handwringing about the possibility of TV’s slow fadeout. But fears in the industry could be unfounded – at least according to one expert.

“TV, as it merges with video, is going to explode with growth,” predicted Jeffrey Cole, director of the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, on Day One of Audience Measurement 3.0, the Advertising Research Foundation’s conference on June 24 and 25. It was just one of the provocative findings he revealed from “The World Internet Project,” an eight-year, ongoing study he is leading on how the web has affected consumers’ media consumption.

TV usage among internet users dropped during the years of slow dial-up access, as consumers headed into their home offices and back bedrooms to log on uninterrupted, Cole noted. But that’s changed, thanks to speedier connections, he said. Many Americans have moved their computers into the kitchen, family room or den, where they check the Internet throughout the day, according to the research. “We saw the threat from the web to TV completely disappear,” he said.

The AM 3.0 conference is bringing together almost 600 professionals from 19 countries, said Bob Barocci, president and CEO of the ARF. Organized around the theme “Catch me if you can,” it offers insight to current media trends and how to measure consumer behavior at a time when fast-changing technology is affecting their habits profoundly.

Internet advertising in a new era

One of the biggest sources of concern in the industry is consumers’ lack of receptivity to internet advertising. In one surprising finding, Cole’s research revealed that in the last seven months, consumers have become more open to it, with the exception of pop-ups. “We’re seeing web users make the same deal with the web as with TV, where advertising is the price of content,” he said.

Not all consumers have reached this level of tolerance, according to data in “The End of Advertising as We Know It,” a study of 2,400 households in five countries by the IBM Institute for Business Value.

Many people in the group IBM calls “massive passives” – consumers who tend to go with the flow of the media marketplace rather than adopt products early – are looking for an advertising free-environment. Some 43% of this group said they were willing to pay for access to content if it meant avoiding ads, noted Louisa Shipnuck, global business development executive for the media and entertainment industry at IBM.

And with increasing consumer control of media changing the way individuals expect to interact with ads, this challenge isn’t going to go away, she warned. “The advertising industry faces more change in the next five years than it did in the past 50,” she said. “

Making surveys more worthwhile for consumers

Complicating matters is the fact that consumers aren’t always accurate in reporting their own media usage, noted Lee Doyle, North America CEO of Mediaedge:cia. “What people say they’re going to do and what they do are different,” he said.

With the need for accurate data growing, researchers need to make it more enjoyable for consumers to participate in studies, said Paul Todd, product management director, Google, co-chair of the event. “I don’t think we’re particularly warm and fuzzy toward our users as we measure and probe them,” he said.

The pace of innovation isn’t going to change any time soon, warned conference co-chair Richard Marks, global head of media research at TNS. “The number of essential touch points is growing exponentially,” he said.