It seems that everything these days has to be interpreted as black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. There\u2019s no room any more for good old grey. This is not healthy; extreme positions mean there\u2019s little room for discussion or constructive debate.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s thus with some trepidation that I say that we should be rethinking industry audience research\u2019s remit.<\/p>\n
Having attracted the angry research brigade, let me continue.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a huge fan of joint industry research. There\u2019s no question that reaching a consensus around the best way to measure audiences is sensible and effective. It stops all those pointless arguments about whether the definition of a reader\/viewer\/visitor should be arrived at via this or the other technique.<\/p>\n
We can thus all get on with our day jobs secure in the knowledge that currency research might not be the truth (it\u2019s never claimed to be any such thing) but at least we\u2019re all agreed that it\u2019s the best estimate the best researchers in the business can come up with.<\/p>\n
Audience measurement techniques were created to measure how many, and broadly what sort of people were doing something \u2013 watching TV, reading a newspaper and so on. They\u2019re focussed on counting heads, and defining those heads.<\/p>\n
But today that\u2019s nowhere near sufficient. Today it\u2019s dawning on us that the way that people are exposed to messages, the context within which the message sits, how the audience is feeling when exposed to the message, how the message resonates, all of these and no doubt other criteria are important. Plus, of course what happens as a result of the exposure.<\/p>\n
Today we have the first bit \u2013 the headcounting bit \u2013 and the last bit \u2013 the did-it-work bit \u2013 pretty well covered.<\/p>\n
But we\u2019re not so good at all those context bits in the middle. And they matter as if you get them right then the odds are that you\u2019ll deliver success more consistently and for less outlay.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we need to rethink what goes into industry audience measurement. We should accept we\u2019re great at estimating how many, and keep going on that front as no doubt there are improvements still to make, including doing all we can to bring the likes of FB and Google into the fold.<\/p>\n
But at the same time the industry should consider setting its best researchers to tackle the softer contextual questions. Is live TV a different thing from binge viewing? And if so how? Do people watch video on Facebook or YouTube differently from how they watch the self-same thing on a TV set? And does it matter?<\/p>\n
How best to combine different data-sets, and what process should be employed to make sure we capture learnings to improve audience measures further?<\/p>\n
Some of these questions are it is true being addressed by the relevant media owners themselves, in the same way that valuable insights have been generated by publishers and broadcasters for years, but isn\u2019t it time for the industry as a whole to consider them as an integral part of our foundation systems?<\/p>\n
The JIC system has worked very well for many years. It will continue to play an invaluable role but maybe it\u2019s time to extend its remit for the benefit of us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seems that everything these days has to be interpreted as black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. There\u2019s no room any more for good old grey. This is not healthy; extreme positions mean there\u2019s little room for discussion or constructive debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":931,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions\/931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}