Advertising gets closer and closer

 
Media Research: In the United States, efforts are intensifying to develop more precise methods for measuring media use. 
While media usage data is the be-all and end-all for the entire marketing industry worldwide, the topic isn’t exactly considered particularly «sexy.» “Who actually wants to go to lunch with a media researcher?” asked Jon Mandel, the head of Nielsen Connect, provocatively during a recent panel at New York’s Advertising Week, thereby expressing his view on why integrated media research remains a mystery to many media professionals to this day.
Nielsen is the leading media research company in the United States. For several years now, it has been focused on integrating measurements across a wide variety of platforms—no longer just TV, radio, print, and the Internet, but also cell phones, iPods, in-store and outdoor advertising, and video games. To do this, Nielsen uses data from a national panel comprising 12,000 households. Because Nielsen wants to offer its clients—who, due to the company’s market dominance, typically pay hefty prices for its products—a comprehensive analysis, the initiative is called ’Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement,« or A2M2 for short.
Marketing Professionals Dissatisfied: For years, marketing firms have been complaining about the increasing fragmentation of media research. «For one of our integrated campaigns, we received print data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, internet figures from Comscore, and TV ratings from Nielsen,» lamented Beth-Ann Eason, Senior Vice President at the media company Martha Stewart Living. «Yet the Holy Grail of measurement—user engagement—isn’t being measured at all.» But that «engagement»—that is, how intensely a media consumer engages with an advertising message—is something that, of course, no one can currently determine with precision.
One example that at least comes close to this, however, is the measurement of what’s known as «buzz marketing.» Nielsen analyzes what consumers say about a specific topic in blogs and public chat rooms. According to Jon Mandel’s account, one successful example was a research project for a pharmaceutical company on diabetes. The study examined what consumers were most concerned about, which type of diabetes was most prevalent, and what was perceived as positive or negative. «In the past, a study was commissioned to justify a decision that had already been made,» said Mandel. “That has changed with new technologies.”
A Sweet Target Audience: Starting this summer, even video games have been included in Nielsen’s measurement scope—specifically, the extent to which players notice «in-game advertising» on consoles such as Xbox, Wii, or PlayStation. «53 percent of Americans have access to a console,» said Jeff Hermann, vice president of Nielsen Games. «The target audience of 13- to 24-year-old male users is particularly attractive to marketers.»
In outdoor and out-of-home advertising—one of the fastest-growing advertising categories in the U.S. alongside online advertising—advertisers are increasingly demanding reliable measurement methods (see
«We're setting up a rating system»
), how and to what extent the advertising messages are noticed. The mall network Adspace recently completed a pilot project in which it installed its nearly three-meter-tall digital billboards in about 100 luxury shopping centers across the U.S., reaching approximately 100 million visitors, according to the company. «Advertisers simply wanted more substantial results,» said Bill Ketchum, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Adspace, explaining the rationale behind the survey. As part of the study, 600 mall visitors were interviewed in detail about the extent to which they remembered the content of the billboards. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed stated that they actually remembered the advertised product. The digital billboards display a series of 12-second video clips highlighting the day’s special offers. Longer clips are not recommended because customers generally do not linger in front of them for that long. «Out-of-home advertising has proven to be very successful because marketing companies need to reach customers directly at the point of purchase,» said Paul Lindstrom, Senior Vice President of Custom Research at Nielsen, which participated in the Adspace study. «The closer the customer is to the point of purchase, the more relevant the message is to them, and the more likely they are to make a purchase.»
Gerti Schön, New York