Ipsos Cellphone Radio Measuring Thing Maybe Included in RAJAR Tests

Michael Hedges February 24, 2006

Bells are ringing at RAJAR headquarters as Ipsos reported its new electronic measurement device for radio passed the functionality test, the same test passed by ARBITRON’s PPM and Eurisko’s Media Monitor early last year.

US audience survey company Media Audit signed with Ipsos to market the device. The Ipsos/Media Audit press release implies a relatively concurrent testing cycle, a bit of a stretch. After the GfK RadioControl watch was kicked out of the exhaustive test (“One of the devices clearly did not work,” said an anonymous observer close to the RAJAR board) RAJAR trials moved forward as Ipsos tried to get it’s new gizmo together, a solid year after the others. Better to have three to choose from than only two, even if Ipsos misses the current RAJAR tender. (corrected from original post)

The Ipsos gadget is based in a cellphone. The advantage being that compliance is always a problem and everybody carries a cellphone. And the Ipsos device will measure every platform – radio, TV, cable, internet – and have a GPS locator so maps can be drawn showing exposure to billboards and shopping centers. Does anybody want to see the privacy policy?

Certainly not ad agencies who love all data: good, bad or ugly. And since they make the broadcasters pay for it all, why not demand more, more, more?

Of course, the UK market (or anywhere else) is far less important than the US to the measurement people. Media Audit has long offered very comprehensive – though extrapolated – data on US media usage. Ipsos is a major world-wide supplier of market research services, currently supplying diary surveys to RAJAR.  Clear Channel Communications – owner of a zillion radio stations in the US – is holding out on the ARBITRON PPM, obviously hoping for better deals through competition. ARBITRON is sending out press releases ten times a week about one media buyer or ad agency signing on to their product.

Arbitron’s Brad Bedford, in a telephone conversation last summer about the Ipsos cellphone, asked the very simple question: “Is somebody going to carry two cellphones, one with your address book and one to measure radio?”

Eurisko, now owned by GfK NOP, hasn’t entered the US battle. Typically cheerful VP Andrea Mezzasalma said “We can put the Media Monitor in anything; cellphone, pager, ballpoint pen.”

ftm Follow Up & Comments

It's Not Nice to Scam Mother RAJAR - March 1, 2006

PR wars are fun to watch. Word-spinners look to score points on a tenuously defined battle-field. The strategy – lame, even when it works – is to create a buzz, even when that’s only a distraction.

So, when Ipsos tossed out a press release about their Media Phone instrument for measuring media a line was included that said device had passed RAJAR’s “functionality test.” Well, maybe; depending. RAJAR’s public relations boss, Penelope James, jumped. “It was a lab test. That’s all,” she said. “There’s been no field test.”

Methinks that means only that the device exists and has an on-off button.

RAJAR did not “hold up” its current testing schedule to accommodate Ipsos, as I stated in the now corrected post (above). “You’re wrong,” I heard ringing in the phone.

“But I thought…”

“No.”

“But…”

“Wrong!”

Ipsos does, indeed, have a device designed to measure radio listening and any other media one might be exposed to. And it’s set in a mobile phone. The RAJAR tender for radio measurement in the UK up for grabs is still under evaluation and the testing process is well under way. The Ipsos device is not included.

Ipsos fired their shot when Ms James was on holiday, a tactic understood by all good spinners.