Mediaboss Marketing

Quality control The size of the sample and other components of it need to be overhauled. SHUTTERSTOCK/SCYTHER5

Indias size complicates media measurement efforts. Sample size and constituents need to reflect the diversity better, and more advertisers need to fund it with money and knowledge

Media measurement in India is an extremely complex practice due to the sheer size of the country and the heterogeneity of her population. Regional, ethnic and linguistic differences within the same region just add to the complexity. The obvious questions that arise before embarking on research of any sort are in relation to the adequate sample size for the research, whether there should be quotas for certain demographics, where should one conduct the research, the research methodology and the cost of the research.

It is a known fact that the sample sizes, especially in the TV measurement space, are inadequate. This results in high relative errors while reporting data and makes the data useless in certain cases. If we need robust data to help us make the right business decisions, this is the first issue that needs to be tackled. While the IRS sample size in the range of 2.5 lakh, there might be a case to examine the sample sizes by demographics by pop strata at an individual state level and in case of inadequacy, these samples should be boosted.

The issue of research methodology needs to be examined in relation to the advances in technology globally in research. Media reports suggest that technology/methodology in TV measurement in India has remained more or less static for almost a decade. While TAM, I am sure, would have improved its technology over the years, experts think it did not keep pace with the market developments. IRS, for the first time, has used Dual CAPI which is a much needed enhancement in the methodology. With this development and the advanced technology claims of BARC, I think we are moving in the right direction.

The most critical factor in conducting media research in India is the funding of a survey on such a large scale. The key issue is the fact that advertisers barring a few do not even pay for any media data. Most of the funding for this kind of research comes from media owners who earn advertising revenue based on this data and media planning and buying agencies who use this data to make decisions on behalf of advertisers who are their clients. What advertisers need to realise is that it is their money that is at stake here. Agencies have nothing to lose if the data is error-prone. But advertisers have a lot to lose as bad research data can lead to bad business decisions and it is in their interest to contribute to media research in India both financially and intellectually.

While it will be speculative to pinpoint any reason for the current situation that the media measurement practice in India is currently in, I do believe that the issues mentioned can address the situation effectively, if carefully thought through.

There are a few malpractices that have been reported in the past which can have serious implications for the research findings. Some of these might be hearsay and so should be looked at as potential ways of influencing the research.

For example, publications dumping copies in certain areas/cities where the survey is likely to happen can influence readership during the field work. Or publications could contact the research agency, offering people there bribes to report false data to show them in a better light.

In the television space, it has been alleged that channels were running promotions to influence viewership in select towns which are part of the TAM sample. Another charge was that TV channels were gifting TV sets to respondents in the panel with the diktat that their channel should play the maximum on the TV set attached to the peoplemeter.

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Clearing the path to accurate data

February 26, 2014

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports Your Universe Online

Despite the availability of DVDs and other media products claiming to help babies learn to read, these goods dont actually instill reading skills in infants, according to new research appearing in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

While we cannot say with full assurance that infants at this age cannot learn printed words, our results make clear they did not learn printed words from the baby media product that was tested, senior author Susan Neuman, a professor researchers at New York Universitys Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, said Tuesday in a statement.

In order to test whether or not these media products could actually help infants develop reading skills, Neuman and colleagues from Lakehead University, the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan examined 117 babies between the ages of nine and 18 months who were randomly placed in treatment or control groups.

Those babies in the treatment group were given a baby media product such as a DVD, a set of word and picture flashcards or a flip book while the children in the control group did not. The treatment group infants used the products daily over a seven-month span as researchers conducted one home visit, four laboratory visits, and monthly assessments of language development for both the treatment and control groups.

Neumans team tested the reading skills in the laboratory by having them recognize the names and sounds of letters, as well as their vocabulary, their ability to identify words on sight, and their reading comprehension levels. A mixture of eye-tracking tasks and standardized measures were used to study outcomes at each developmental stage.

Using a state-of-the art eye-tracking technology, which follows even the slightest eye movements, the researchers were able to closely monitor how the infants distributed their attention and how they shifted their gaze from one location to another when shown specific words and phrases, the university explained.

The results of the research, which included criterion and standardized measures of emergent and early reading skills, found no noticeable difference between those babies who had been exposed to the media-based learning tools and the control group on all but one of the 14 assessments conducted.

The lone exception was the parents belief that the children were learning new words, despite evidence to the contrary. On exit interviews with the parents, Neuman said that moms and dads had great confidence that their children were learning to read and had benefited from the use of such programs. Her teams findings indicate that their faith in those educational DVDs and other vocabulary development tools is misplaced.

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New Study Confirms Instructional Media Can't Teach Babies To Read

A gun control group founded in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is ramping up pressure on social media websites to ban gun sales on their platforms, part of a corporate policy advocacy push that has emerged as the issue of firearms regulation fades in legislatures.

Popular sites like Facebook and Instagram currently permit users to buy and sell weapons through an online marketplace, and the group, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, says those policies "make it easy for minors and dangerous people to get guns online, with no questions asked."

Moms Demand Action announced this week they are in formal talks with Facebook, which also owns Instagram, to convince the company to halt gun sales. The talks are the result of a campaign, launched last month, that calls on Facebook to stop facilitating potentially illegal activity and to block easy, unregulated access to dangerous firearms. Other online social platforms, like Craigslist and Google+, prohibit gun sales.

Moms Demand Action's founder, Shannon Watts, said the group recently began conversations with Facebook about how the company can end "easy access" to guns through its website.

"Until they do, they are taking the risk that they are facilitating the illegal sale of guns on their social network. American moms are the number one demographic on Facebook and we don't want guns sold into the dangerous hands on the same site where we post our family photos," said Watts.

A petition to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom asking them to change the policy has drawn nearly 100,000 signatures.

"We've got a tremendous amount of interest in getting Facebook to change their policy," said Deborah Lewis, spokeswoman for the Central Connecticut branch of Mom's Demand Action.

Last year, the bulk of the group's lobbying efforts were legislative-focused, amid fierce gun control debates in statehouses throughout the country and in Congress. Some laws were changed, other efforts faltered, and lawmakers, for the most part, since have moved to other issues. Moms Demand Action, though committed in its push for stricter gun regulations, has turned its focus to achieving gun safety through reformed corporate policies. Last fall, after pressure from gun control advocates, Starbucks CEO and president Howard Schultz reined in a policy allowing people to bring guns into stores, and wrote an open letter asking customers to drop the weapons when they grab a cup of coffee.

Though Schultz described the policy change as a "request and not an outright ban," gun control advocates still claim the victory.

"Starbucks was a big win for us," said Lewis. "We look at gun safety from a few different angles we look at it legislatively, but it's many-pronged."

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Gun Control Group Wants Sales On Social Media Stopped

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(ThinkStock) After much criticism from conservative quarters, the Federal Communications Commission has... A key advocate of the project to assess whether news organizations are meeting government-defined... Many liberals seemingly attempt to prevent criticism by restricting speech. (Thinkstock) View 5 More Photos

Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission say they have absolutely no plans to censor the press.

"The commission has no intention of regulating political or other speech of journalists or broadcasters," FCC chairman Tom Wheeler wrote to a group of House Republicans on Feb. 14, after controversy erupted over an FCC project to question journalists to determine whether their articles, commentaries, and newscasts meet government-determined "critical information needs."

Likewise, FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a key backer of the project, said during her Senate confirmation hearing back in 2009 that the FCC "is not in the business of censoring speech or content on the basis of political views and opinions."

They no doubt believe what they say. So what explains the FCC's -- or at least the Democratic side of the FCC's -- willingness to embark on an effort that many journalists felt infringed on some of the nation's most cherished First Amendment protections?

The answer lies in the firm belief among many on the Left, and that includes some in the FCC, that the media is in dire need of "reform."

Angry and troubled by the continued success of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other conservative programs and personalities, media reformers say the press is under such tight corporate control that "independent" voices have been drowned out and many Americans receive a dangerously one-sided diet of information.

The answer, those reformers believe, is strong government action to create more "diversity" in the media. If more women and minorities, in particular, own and control media outlets, the idea goes, the less influence Limbaugh, Fox, et al will have.

In 2011, Commissioner Clyburn appeared at an event called the National Conference for Media Reform, staged annually by a left-leaning media activist organization called Free Press. From the audience came a question: "I understand the Fairness Doctrine is not coming back, but why has the FCC sat by and allowed angry, hateful, often racist talk show hosts, 95 percent of whom are conservative, to poison the supposedly public airwaves?"

The crowd erupted in applause. Clyburn began her answer by suggesting her heart was with the questioner. "This is when the personal side of Mignon and the professional side of Mignon are at constant war," she said. On the one hand, America has free speech for all, "and when we talk about those freedoms of expression, that sometimes mean expressions which we don't agree with."

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Media 'reform' schemes business as usual for some on FCC