Abstract:

The paper discusses the way in which new media are likely to develop in the immediate future and considers the implications of these changes for audience measurement systems across the European market. Existing systems are largely designed for national or large regional channels. The new media will start by being minority channels and in the case of cable highly localised. This suggests that supplementary research will be needed which will have to be integrated with the existing systems. Some of the new media will also be international and advertisers will wish to compare and combine television audiences between countries. Much of this paper therefore considers potential sources of difference between different peoplemeter systems and between peoplemeters and other techniques. Various areas where standardisation might be feasible and should be attempted are suggested. The papier concludes that the biggest sources of difference are likely to acme from the ability of panels to be representative of the population which together with technique differences could have major effects on the comparability of data. The paper concludes with a list of priorities for international advertisers to work towards, for comparable European research standards.