GfK Media Measurement Global View

Our new Radio360 measurement system has been designed to deliver more in-depth insights into listeners’ behavior. This ground-breaking solution took five years to develop using the latest measurement technology and employing all our expertise from years of audience research. Now active in Australia, 60,000 respondents annually use electronic and paper diaries alongside our proprietary watch meters to track listening habits, including streaming through smartphones, smart speakers and computers. Crucially, this means networks can profile listeners to linear and streamed radio so they can develop and curate the right content and better target advertising. 

The launch in Australia – the first market to adopt the approach – has attracted the attention of the press. Read our interview in The Australian Business Review, published 13th February. John Musgrove, head of research for Australia’s Commercial Radio & Audio discussed the development in the media too. Read his views in the official press release, and in articles published in RedTech, Media Week, Radio Today and Radio Info.com.

We were also delighted that GfK’s Rolf Müller and myself were asked to present the approach at the start of March to egta, the European Association of Radio and TV Sales Houses, in Milan at the annual Market Intelligence Meeting.  

On March 27th, I presented at Radiodays Europe in Prague. Following an introduction on the stage from Grant Blackley, CEO & MD of Southern Cross Austereo, where he praised GfK’s passion, collaboration and expertise, as well as being a safe pair of hands, I also described the hybrid methodology and how the analysis of the integrated listening will enable stations to better plan their campaigns and grow their audiences and revenue. 

We recently published our annual media measurement white paper: What will tomorrow’s media industry need from audience measurement? To get a balanced discussion we posed this question to both the sell side and the buy side. We’’ve highlighted 5 key take outs. These are just top line summaries so for more information, be sure to download the full paper to read at your leisure. 

5 Key Takeouts

• Whilst there is much debate about the desire to move ‘beyond exposure’, accurate measures of exposure across platforms remain the priority for the currencies, the foundation on which other metrics can be built.
• There is great interest in attention metrics on both the buy- and sell side, but less consensus on the possibility of agreed industry measures of attention being incorporated into the currencies, with an emphasis more on the usefulness of attention measures for planning as opposed to trading.
• The need to measure outcomes is acknowledged by all parties and currencies need to be compatible with, and able to facilitate, outcomes measurement. Nonetheless there is little expectation that it is practical for currencies to directly measure outcomes. The outcomes that need to be measured will vary greatly from advertiser to advertiser, making agreed industry metrics impractical.
• There is agreement on both buy- and sell side that measuring content is an essential part of the currencies’ mission, in order to demonstrate the value of context. In the long term it is acknowledged that the growth of programmatic is breaking the link between content and advertising.
• There is support for cross-media measurement initiatives, but concern on the sell side that initiatives should take account of quality environments and not commoditise advertising. There is some frustration on the buy side at the speed of recent cross-media initiatives and, in some cases, even the direction of travel is being questioned.