Setting priorities
TV audience measurement in the digital age
Toby Syfret
Abstract
Packet-switching digital technologies have inspired visions of TV Anytime, Anywhere. But, they beg a series of questions for the advertising and audience measurement industry. In particular:
- What changes in personal media consumption are in prospect? (To what extent will the classic broadcast model remain? How personalised will media consumption actually become?)
- How rapidly are the new technologies and formats expected to emerge?
- What will determine the commercial importance/value to advertisers (e.g. audience size, acceptability of promotional messages, etc.)?
- How possible will it be to measure the various new forms of TV consumption?
- What, in spite of the challenges, are the musts, the nice to have, the unnecessary or plain impossible?
The paper reviews the main trends and likely timescales of TV Anytime developments, the expected uptake and the challenges involved. It focuses on the requirements and associated measurement issues, whether to do with the technology, sampling, reporting or simply the costs versus benefits.
Toby Syfret
Enders Analysis, UK
Toby Syfret is media analyst at Enders Analysis, an independent research company covering the TMT sector, and is responsible for heading up the analysis of commercial TV broadcast and broadband developments in the UK and other larger European markets.
Toby has been active in the field of new media developments since 1980, beginning with ten years at J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy and Mather as a specialist in European television broadcast and new media markets. Between 1990 and joining Enders Analysis in 2003, he worked as an independent media consultant. During that time he has undertaken many projects in the field of audience measurement, largely in television, but also covering radio and the print media. His television work has included audits and appraisals of TAM systems covering some 14 countries in Europe and the Near East.
Toby is also author of two editions of Television Peoplemeters in Europe, as well as contributor/co-drafter for the first two editions of the first two editions of EBU-hosted working party international guidelines on television audience measurement. He holds a doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Oxford University.
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