Congress Hears Arguments for Ad Measurement Change

In Tuesday's second keynote speech at the ESOMAR Congress, Ted McDonnell, Manager of Interactive Marketing Innovation at Procter & Gamble, explained the rationale behind the World Advertising Federation's recent call for reform of audience measurement.

The WFA's Media Committee launched its Blueprint for Consumer-Centric Holistic Measurement on September 5th, to encourage accurate audience measurement across multiple media (www.mrweb.com/drno/news4519.htm ).

Speaking as a representative of the WFA, McDonnell explained the objective of the blueprint was to 'guide the transition of audience measurement in the industry to accommodate the increasingly complex media consumption behaviour of consumers'. He gave examples of consumers' constant exposure to messages from multiple channels, quoting research that shows that 70% of TV viewing is accompanied by other media. He pointed out that consumers are also developing 'shielding behaviour', skipping ads on recorded TV shows and installing ad blocking computer software.

McDonnell believes such proliferation of messages - and avoidance of them - makes it hard to measure the effect of each medium, meaning advertisers 'can no longer draw a valid correlation between advertising spend and effect'. The blueprint outlines a vision of 'knowing our consumers beyond demographics, getting information about them in a timely manner, and understanding multi-media behaviour'. It also stresses the importance of methods that not only measure, but also 'more accurately anticipate the synergistic effects of media'.

McConnell expects it will take ten years for this vision to be fully realised, but says industry-wide dialogue and collaboration need to start now. Challenging the audience, he asked: 'Are current measures complete, accurate and timely? No!' He suggested that, by striving for competitive advantage and developing their own niche products, research companies were impeding the development of more effective and robust metrics.

Specific industry goals identified in the blueprint include the development of faster, continuous provision of data; large enough sample sizes; development of target group descriptions; agile and adaptive systems; passive measurement systems.

The WFA Blueprint is online at www.wfanet.org . McDonnell's own blog about the project is at http://holistic-measurement.blogspot.com.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.