Multi-vector character
The media market in Poland is undergoing exactly the same evolution as in all developed countries: the numbers of both content providers and the ways in which they can be used has increased dramatically. While video is gaining in importance, the supply of content is increasingly fragmented, with a large share created directly by users. Using several types of media simultaneously (for example, listening to the radio while surfing the internet on a laptop or watching live TV and commenting on it on a social network using a smartphone is more often the rule than the exception. Both media owners and those entities using them for commercial activities must take into account that consumption is already of a much more multi-vector nature than that shown by traditional studies which describe each type of media separately. The progressive development of technology and the implementation of new solutions, in both ‘new’ and ‘traditional’ media, increase the existing dissonance with each passing year. The need for a new approach to measuring media consumption has never been more pressing.
Media user
In the opinion of MOC TV, representatives of radio and the internet, as well as advertisers associated with the Marketers for Better Research Coalition, the response to this need is the implementation of a cross-media measurement, illustrating media behaviour in an environment where the use of one type of media has a direct impact on the use of others. Put very simply, we want a viewer, listener and internet user, until now treated by research as three different people, to become one: a media user, precisely positioned on a multidimensional map of their behaviour.
The ideal solution would be to design one ‘super measurement’ in which the same users provide information about their activity on different types of media.
Single source measurement
Analysis of global solutions, experience in introducing and maintaining research in Poland, as well as consultations with experts and representatives of the marketing industry show that introducing a 100% single-source measurement is a very difficult and unique undertaking on a global scale. In particular, it is difficult to estimate the finances required to create a measurement which includes all the accepted parameters currently required by the various types of media. Therefore, at present, the optimal compromise, in terms of cost and effect, is the implementation of an integrated (hybrid) model, in which the consumption of all required types of media will be measured using data from a representative panel of individual people (not households), taking account of their specific features This panel could, if necessary, perform a calibration function in relation to other data sources, provided that it is clearly proven that supplementing with such data will improve the quality of the obtained result, and that it is justified in order to optimise the cost of the entire research project.
Added value
Currently, it seems that the best method of collecting data is passive measurement, and this is the method we recommend to collected data from the sample panel. Any other large amount of supplementary data should be collected by a method that provides information of at least the same quality.
Regardless of the shape of the measurement, compared to those methods currently used, its added value should be the possibility for continuing to estimate the unique range of measurements developed by each type of media. The consequence is the introduction of a tool enabling commercial communication planning while controlling the level of duplication. For editorial and advertising content, it should be possible to compare different types of media using standardised common indicators and taking account of their specificity in both the manner of consumption and advertising activities.
Perspective
In the longer term, the market should make an effort to agree a common advertising currency based on the real, proven value of various advertising formats, as well as the specificity of consumption of a given type of media, legal restrictions on advertising placement, as well as targeting and controlling output. Such a reconciliation may be run in parallel with a joint research design and implementation process. However, the market needs to make an unambiguous declaration accepting the new research as a billing standard and about cooperating on the placement of identification codes in different advertising formats for research purposes (this applies primarily to online advertising, but also to audio and video advertising in the case of adopting a solution based on water marketing).
Conclusions
The aforementioned conclusions are the essence of the content of the ‘Assumptions for measuring media consumption in Poland’ http://moctv.pl/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MultiMOC_abstract_en__26.08.2020_fin.pdf document, developed by representatives of television and radio broadcasters and internet publishers, and approved by the Marketeers for Better Research Coalition and the Media Agency Committee. MOC TV is determined to stay at the heart of the initiative to create an effective cross-media measurement until it is fully implemented.
