Measuring Today’s Media World

 Subscribe via RSS to ARF feature articles.

AM 3.0 will take on the challenge of tracking audiences who won’t stay put, notes TNS’s Richard Marks.

“The lines between  broadcast, traditional print and the online world are breaking down, says Richard Marks, global head of media research at TNS.

As co-chair of the ARF’s upcoming Audience Measurement 3.0 conference, he aims to fast-forward the discussion of how to track audiences at a time when such media can no longer be evaluated independently of each other.

“We are looking across all media,” notes Richard, who is running the conference with Paul Todd, product management director at Google. “I would say it’s probably the most ambitious program I’ve seen.”

We caught up with Richard while he was traveling in Budapest for a preview of the conference. TNS does internet, TV and radio audience measurement in some 34 countries.

ARF: Can you share the thinking behind AM 3.0?

Richard: The overall theme for this year’s conference is “Catch Me If You Can.” Digital media have liberated consumers from being told where they have to use media. In a mobile world, they know they can take their media with them. The discussion is also about time shifting. People are able to consume their media when they want it.

At AM 3.0, we will be looking at tracking consumers down wherever they are, in terms of being able to measure them. The conference committee has worked to create a more global context to what’s going on. In the digital era, media is increasingly going across international boundaries.
Another key theme is the cross media issue, which is important for both advertisers, media agencies and increasingly media owners. Most are now active in many areas. They need to understand how their brands are joining up.

The conference will also be looking at new research technologies in the digital era. There is a rich amount of information available from looking at online word of mouth, blogging and social networking.

ARF: What do you consider the biggest challenges in audience measurement today?

Richard:  We have to measure very big things and very small things at the same time. Audiences have gone to being both mass and niche.

The future clearly includes Facebook and social networks, where everyone can make their own videos and put them on their own websites. That is a measurement challenge. At the same time, people still value communal viewing experiences and there are still mass audiences out there. You still have record audiences in the U.S. tuning into the final episode of American Idol for example. There’s a temptation to charge off to measuring the niche markets. But we still need to be measuring the basics well.

ARF: Do we have the technology we need to measure the impact of digital word-of-mouth, buzz marketing, and blogging?

Richard:  I think the research industry does. The challenge coming up is that we have a number of methodologies that can be used to measure things now. How do we get them to sing together well? Not everyone has a set top box, so you need to be using traditional methods to measure some audiences. We have to get used to a world in which we measure media from a number of different sources and work very hard to make sure we can combine and fuse those surveys together.

More and more advertisers need to be able to plan media across all outlets and evaluate the relative importance of every ‘touch point’ with a potential consumer. The challenge is to be catching not just consumers but all these touch points. Increasingly, consumers aren’t willing to give you loads of free time to fill in very large questionnaires or perform complicated research tasks. One of the big advantages of digital is that across a number of areas, primarily the internet and digital TV, we can track passively what people are doing. As someone once said, digital always leaves breadcrumbs for us to analyze. Analog never did. That is the huge opportunity digital presents for those in the measurement industry.