Advertising decision makers now have access to Covid-era modelled media research
The Publisher Research Council (PRC), Broadcast Research Council (BRC) and research partner Nielsen provide the FUSION media research dataset to advertising media planners and decision makers to show readership behaviour across platforms, whether print or online.
Due to the impact of Covid-era lockdowns on consumer media behaviour, the original FUSION data has recently been updated via an interim modelled set of data to show how lockdowns affected media consumption patterns. This research is called FUSION2021 Interim Modelled Update (IMU) and is now available for planning purposes.
“During a challenging era for media research, brought about by Covid, the innovative solution of modelling data provides a useful and appropriate set of data for relevant media advertising media decision making now,” explains Josephine Buys, CEO of PRC.
The new, interim FUSION2021 research includes updated data modelled to the latest South African 2020 population provided by GTI. PAMS 2019 readership figures have also been updated to more accurately reflect the effect of lockdown through the modelling of first quarter 2021 ABC circulation figures. For relevant digital media usage patterns, IAB SA’s Q1 2021 Narratiive data was used in the modelling.
The new FUSION2021 IMU data set thus provides a more realistic view of print and digital readership in 2021 for media planning purposes.
“It’s clear that readers remain, irrespective of whether they read in print or digital form, the most valuable consumer group to reach with advertising,” says PRC research consultant Peter Langschmidt.
“FUSION2021 IMU shows average issue readership of all PAMS titles has decreased from 55% to 50% of all adults. Importantly, however, it’s also clear that remaining readers are an essential audience of brand influencers, with incomes that are now 90% higher than their non-reading counterparts.”
The process of fusing separate data sets improves the relevance of media research data
The PRC is firmly committed to meeting the evolving needs of its advertising and media stakeholders by measuring fast changing consumer behaviour and delivering the most accurate, insightful and representative reader data to guide informed advertising media decision-making.
“Fusion is the future of media research,” elaborates Buys. “Due to the proliferation of media and the challenge of traditional single-source research relying on the respondents’ fallible recall of events, the practice of fusing of data from medium-specific studies is a far better and more accurate solution. By fusing (which really means combining) data from different studies at the respondent level, we are able to obtain much richer and deeper audience insights.”
Buys emphasises that collaborative research across platforms and industry bodies is the most effective and efficient way to conduct advertising media research going forward. “This has just happened in the Netherlands through the innovative creation of Nationaal Media Onderzoek (NMO), the world’s first true cross-media total audience measurement solution. This can and should happen in South Africa too.”
FUSION2021 Interim Modelled Update is now available on the media planning data bureaux Telmar and Clear Decisions.
During a recent webinar, PRC CEO Josephine Buys and Research Consultant Peter Langschmidt provided details of how the modelling was done and how you can use the update for better media placement decision making.
To download the presentation and gain further insight into this data set, or if you missed the launch presentation click here.
