Touchpoints: How people really consume media

together, but until now, proving it has been surprisingly difficult to
do.

Touchpoints - the IPA's long-awaited cross-media research project that
launched last week - claims to be the first standard tool that allows
planners to track the media people consume as part of their day-to-day
lives and understand how they fit together.

- How does it differ from current research tools?

"The results allow us to dig into complex usage scenarios across all
media," Nigel Foote, a managing partner at Starcom, one of the founding
partners of Touchpoints, says. "That means analysis of things such as
shared consumption, or how people look at media together. It's about
planning but, ultimately, it will also have an impact on how we
trade."

In compiling the research, more than 5,000 respondents were given a
handheld PDA and asked to complete a series of questions every
half-an-hour over a week-long period - including how they communicate,
the media they consume and how they feel while they are doing it. The
same group were also given a paper-based questionnaire covering their
individual media choices and general likes and dislikes.

The results form a "hub" database that the IPA will plug into
established research tools, including Barb, the National Readership
Survey and Postar.

This will form an integrated planning system, due to be released in
May.

Beyond its obvious relevance to media agencies, creative agencies will
be hoping the IPA delivers on its aim of making the research an annual
or bi-annual event. Over time, Touchpoints could supply a picture of
cultural trends and how new technology is changing people's lives.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty is one of the creative agencies to have expressed
an interest in subscribing to the research. Guy Murphy, BBH's deputy
chairman, explains: "Increasingly, we need to understand the context in
which our communications appear, not just the content. We also see
brands competing for consumers' attention with everything in their
lives, not just with their competitor brands and this research gives us
an insight into that."

Touchpoints also gives media owners the opportunity to assess how they
fit into people's changing lifestyles and how their individual medium is
consumed in the context of the overall media environment.

The survey asked respondents to record their main media activity in
every half-hour period, and their secondary media activity. The results
reveal consumers are cramming about 32 hours of activity into every
24-hour period and show how different media tend to be consumed in
tandem.

"If you look at the detail, you can see that 50 per cent of TV viewing
is secondary activity and that the attention span for traditional media
is coming under pressure," Dave McEvoy, the marketing director at
JCDecaux, says.

"On the other hand, it gives us new information that can be very useful.
We've found, for example, that the bulk of internet activity comes after
exposure to outdoor - when you get into work, or just after you get
home.

We've always assumed that people listen to their car radios while
looking at posters but the link to the internet is a whole new area for
us."

- The time dimension

The context in which media is consumed is the first and most obvious
benefit that Touchpoints has over other research. Because respondents
had to fill in their media activities periodically throughout the day,
the results show when people are exposed to different media as well as
how long they spend with each. It can let you know their mood throughout
the day, something that could help target groups when they are at their
most receptive. It can even tell you when a defined group is most likely
to go shopping, who they go shopping with and what media they use just
before they go out.

This time dimension also allows planners to find out whether people are
alone or in a group at any point during an average day. For a brand
wanting to reach teenagers with a sensitive healthcare message, for
example, this means the ability to reach them when they are most likely
to be consuming media on their own. A search of the database reveals
that teenagers are 22 per cent more likely to listen to the radio alone
between 10.00pm and 12.00am than they are at any other time of the
day.

Targeting people at times when they are giving one particular medium
their undivided attention is another possibility. Surprisingly, the
research shows that people are less likely to be doing other things
while watching TV before work than you might expect - in fact, they are
more likely to be multi-tasking while watching commercial television in
the evening than they are between 7.00am and 9.30am.

Young people are also especially prone to consuming more than one type
of media at once - 17 per cent of 15- to 24-year-olds are likely to be
looking at or listening to more than one type of media at any given
time, compared with 11 per cent of all adults. But that doesn't mean you
can't catch their undivided attention. On Friday nights, for example,
only 6 per cent of them are multi-tasking.

- Reaching the DM unreachables

The scope of the research allows deeper analysis of individual consumer
groups than has been possible before - those who opt out of receiving
direct mail, for example. According to Touchpoints, that's 57 per cent
of the population. Until now, those people remained an unidentifiable
mass: no-one really knew which alternative media could be used to target
them.

Thanks to the database, it's now possible to find out. On average, DM
non-adopters spend four hours a day watching TV (just slightly less than
the national average), tend to listen to more radio (especially Radio 2)
and particularly enjoy TV comedies, but aren't that keen on soaps.

"Now we can target by media action, so we can see which groups are most
likely to respond to DM," Foote says. "We can also look at how to reach
people who opt out by using alternative media. That's great for direct
targeting, which is an increasingly important part of any media
plan."

- Do Daily Mail readers conform to stereotype?

Whichever consumer group forms your target market, Touchpoints allows
planners to segment audiences more creatively than has been possible in
the past.

As a result, challenging the stereotypes becomes a real possibility.

Do Daily Mail readers, for example, have the straight-laced media and
lifestyle tastes that you might expect? According to the research, they
are avid readers of Tesco Magazine, Saga, Good Housekeeping, Reader's
Digest and BBC Gardener's World. More surprisingly, they are also fans
of FHM and Loaded, although women's monthlies are less popular with the
group.

Analysis can even be done of individuals' tastes. We all know that he's
a keen user of his BlackBerry, but how else does Sir Martin Sorrell
communicate and what media does he consume? Run his profile (age, job
and so on) through the database and you discover that he watches a lot
less tele-vision than the national average, but looks at more websites
and is more likely to read a daily newspaper. Dig a little deeper into
the system and you can pinpoint which newspapers he is likely to read or
what he's using the internet for.

- A new way to communicate

It might make depressing reading for the publishers of the national
dailies, but the research confirms what they already know - teenagers
and 15- to 24-year-olds spend an average of just six minutes per day
reading a daily newspaper, far below the national average. They also
consume less TV and radio, but spend a lot more time travelling and
using the internet.

As you might expect, broadband internet use is most prevalent among this
age group, but its popularity extends far beyond that market, with
take-up remaining high right into the 45- to 54-year-old age group.

Perhaps the biggest change in lifestyles concerns the way people
communicate.

Fifteen- to 24-year-olds spend almost as much time speaking face-to-face
as the national average, but much more than average (4.6 per cent of the
total) talking on their mobiles and 3.3 per cent talking in chatrooms or
instant messaging.

The popularity of texting has also had a huge impact. Young people text
far more than they speak on their mobile phones - 63.2 per cent of their
overall mobile phone use is by SMS, compared with the national average
of 45.1 per cent.

Written communication has also seen a seismic shift. E-mail now makes up
48.4 per cent of all written communications, SMS follows with 29 per
cent and letter writing comes a poor third, with 12.9 per cent. For 15-
to 24-year-olds, the story changes: 47.5 per cent of written
communications made by that age group are by text message,with 27.9 per
cent on e-mail.

- What people really think about advertising

All the recent talk of engagement begs the question: do people actually
like the ads they see and hear? According to Touchpoints, 19 per cent of
the population find advertising intrusive, while 15 per cent do not.

Although nearly 47.1 per cent admit to changing TV channels when the ads
come on, the Government will be happy to hear that nearly two-thirds
(62.9 per cent) of respondents would be happy to see ads on the BBC if
it meant the abolition of the licence fee.

Almost half (49.5 per cent) say they usually like TV advertising, though
the number who claim to like ads varies significantly by media - just
10.9 per cent say they generally like the advertising in newspapers and
only 36.1 per cent usually find radio advertising informative.

Notably, this is one section of the survey in which the internet fares
worse than its old-media peers. More than two-thirds of respondents (68
per cent) agreed with the statement "I find advertising on the internet
very irritating", and only 8 per cent disagreed. It may be the
fastest-growing medium both in terms of usage and adspend, but it seems
agencies have yet to work out how to target people online without
simultaneously alienating them.