It wasnât so long ago that nobody knew what the man in the street was thinking, what his views about life were and what he wanted. And even if this information was available, it was hardly ever taken into account. This situation has changed beyond all recognition. Thanks to public opinion surveys and opinion polls, we now know much more about what the public wants, what people think about a multitude of issues and their attitudes to almost everything. And the internet has now made this evident 24 hours a day. Polls, often conducted on a daily basis, are increasingly becoming a determining factor in public life and this is especially true in the run up to an election. But what can be said about the quality of these polls or about the impact of this instantaneous feedback on the democratic process? After all, politicians tend to adjust their positions on the basis of the volatile information that reaches them. Do they speak from their own convictions or do they more often say what they think the voters want to hear? And how well do the media handle the wide range of polls that are submitted with ever increasing frequency? Should there be restrictions? More attention does indeed need to be paid to standards of performance and media coverage. The point of departure for this could be the recently updated ESOMAR/WAPOR guide for Opinion Polls. However, whatever happens, industry self regulation should lead the way. In this issue, we also present the views of a number of industry insiders about the outlook for 2007 and developments in the medium term.
The papers for this edition of Online Audience Measurement suggest that research into the performance of this new medium is beginning to present itself in a more established way. There is less discussion about possibilities and rather more focus on accurate measurement, planning and ROI. Research companies specialising in online audience measurement are beginning to face up to the challenge of creating stable and useable currencies.
This paper is an update of the Advertising Research Foundation's historic 1961 monograph "Toward Better Media Comparisons". It has been revised to include new levels of paid media performance attentiveness, persuasion and response and to consider new media types, especially online media and Interactive TV. The new model contains eight levels at which media performance can be measured to help marketers plan their advertising campaigns: vehicle distribution; vehicle exposure; advertising exposure; advertising attentiveness; advertising communication; advertising persuasion; advertising response; and sales response. The way advertisers think about media has changed in the last forty years. The Internet, Interactive TV and Direct Response advertising have expanded media's job from simply exposing a message to include encouraging and facilitating a response. The concept of recency has focused marketers on advertisingâs contribution to making the next sale. And more and more, it is on response that media are being judged. Media measurement has no choice but to follow mediaâs newly expanded purpose.
Since 1996 the global interactive media industry has been striving to demonstrate accountability. Similarly in 1930 print media advertisers began to insist on independent measurement of circulation. They were also working on early versions of research into readership. The same was true later for radio, TV, exhibitions and ambient media. The fundamental difference for interactive media was the opportunity to start the process globally. This was never and is still not the case for any other medium. Different measurement providers around the world (and competing companies in the same country) still use different definitions for a âpaid copyâ of a newspaper, for example. This paper discusses the two ways that website traffic can be measured as well as various methodologies that are used to analyse server based traffic data. Case studies are provided.
The paper describes working principles of the new equipment, the âSnifferâ, a singular conceptual update of old people meter systems that solves some emergent problems of TV audience measurement, mainly those related to the diversity of the dynamically changing tuning alternatives. The new meter is already implemented in a 600 household people meter TV panel running in Sao Paulo, Brazil since the second half of 1996. Authors provide data to evaluate its performance.
This is a practical paper which draws extensively from the experience gained over many years of continuously tracking TV advertising campaigns. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate firstly how a new research-based approach can provide new insights into how TV advertising works, and secondly how it can provide new directions for making the advertising mix work better. By tracking consumer response continuously every day and every week, and by overlaying media inputs, one can now blow away some of the myths that have historically shrouded evaluations of advertising and media performance. The main problem has always been to know which 50% of advertising is being wasted. The solution is provided by an approach that fuses continuous consumer response to advertising with continuous media activity. This has produced new insights into how advertising works by separating ad performance from media performance. This has further led to the development of empirically-based models of media efficiency and ad performance. The paper draws on case study evidence to demonstrate how the new approach works and how it has been used to address key media user questions such as as...is my ad working? is my media working? how much do I need to spend on a TV campaign? how long should a TV campaign run for? what is an optimum media flighting pattern? By addressing these key questions, this new approach is making a valuable contribution to improving the quality of advertising decision making, the performance of ads and the performance of media campaigns.
More relevant and more realistic measures of media performance are now within our grasp. We must open our minds and we must open our pocketbooks to realise the benefits these data offer for more efficient and more effective advertising campaigns. While there is no denying the great importance of advertising weight, of the creative platform, and of the creative execution, letâs make no mistake about which media we select and how we use them can make or break an otherwise sound advertising plan. We really can make better media choices with more relevant media data. We really can increase the productivity of our advertising campaigns.
The advertising industry is rapidly changing. Advertisers are looking for immediate results; often at a very short notice. Advertising agencies try to expand their service functions from merely creative to overall marketing services. The recession period didn't only slow down the growth of advertising expenditures, but lead to a further shift from above the line towards below the line activities; direct marketing being the big winner. It also lead to an increased pressure on prices and margins via media broking and media buying instruments. The real or perceived value for money no longer was determined by value but merely by price/discounts. In the publishing industry the not to be stopped growth of TV time available decreased the market share of print dramatically. One of our studies shows per product category a direct decline of the marketshare for magazines, where the share of TV swings upwards.
The marketing objectives and programming output for a radio station never remain the same, neither do the problems. But the research programme set up in 1979 has proved to be an accurate and flexible instrument. Radio Tele Luxembourg is firmly convinced that it would not be possible to programme, market or sell the 208 English Service without the benefit of a continuing research programme.