Major media owners sign up to vast audience initiative

In essence, the consortium wants to be able to link information on how the public consume their media, whether sitting in front of a TV, listening to radio in the car or wandering past a poster site.

The IPA claims the project will not only ensure that existing currencies survive, but will help salvage the credibility of the entire media industry – which has been threatened by the lack of an integrated system for planning advertising spend.

The system is not only the largest scheme of its kind ever seen within the UK, but also believed to be unique worldwide.

Other media owners backing the pilot include Emap, AOL, Chrysalis Radio, Guardian Newspapers, JCDecaux, SMG and Wanadoo. The severity of the problem facing the industry has enabled the IPA to move through a potential political minefield to get overwhelming support for its plan.

NOP, which will run the first trials this month, has won the tender to come up with a survey to be published next spring and, if successful, annually.

Starcom UK chairman Jim Marshall – who chairs the IPA Media Futures Group which called for the project – said: “It’s the first piece of industry research that isn’t based on a single medium. It will provide much needed and absurdly overdue inter-media comparisons.

“It’s not surprising that major media owners are displaying a huge degree of interest.”

There had been widespread fear that politics behind the scenes would stop the project getting off the ground, as the research will enable clients to measure the effectiveness of different media against each other.

But the growing dissatisfaction among clients that there is no industry-wide way of linking the different measurement systems has won the day.

The consumer-centric study, to be based on a panel of 5,000 people, requires participants to record their media consumption every half hour of the day and the results will be able to be integrated with the likes of Barb, NRS or Rajar figures.

Lynne Robinson, the IPA’s research director, said: “The lack of a multi-media tool has been impinging on the perceived professionalism of the media.”

Robinson said the research, which will use similar methodol- ogy to previous consumer studies carried out by the BBC, would sit in the middle of existing industry measurement.

“We want to support the existing currencies, which already cost the industry £30m a year. We are not setting up a rival currency.”

The founding partners in the study will get a cheaper rate for buying into the survey, but the IPA hopes to help fund it by selling it to agencies, media owners and clients.

John Fryers, research director of Chrysalis Radio, described the research as “invaluable”.

Andre McGarrigle, head of ad planning at Guardian Newspapers, added: “TouchPoints has the potential for creating a common planning language and with it, greater transparency. That can only be good for the industry.”

Justin Sampson, director of customer relationship marketing at ITV Sales said: “We’re confident that the study will communicate the continuing importance of television in the UK’s media diet and are investing, alongside our customers, so that we can engage the advertising industry in the power of television as a medium.”.