IPA's Touchpoint survey

Just a curiosity, or an essential media research and planning tool? asks Brian Tarran

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising's (IPA) Touchpoints study is not just another survey. Launched last month, it provides a glimpse into the media consumption habits and lifestyles of 5,000 UK adults.

But more than this, Touchpoints promises to finally deliver to advertisers and media owners one of their holy grails: a single source of data which can be used to plan, buy and run campaigns across a range of media, from TV to radio, to outdoor, cinema and online.

There is still some way to go before the IPA's vision is fully realised. It is now the task of research agency RSMB to fuse the information gleaned from the Touchpoints "hub" survey with UK media currencies including Barb, Rajar, NRS and Postar, to create the anticipated multimedia planning database.

The job may only be half done – but the fact the project has come this far is an achievement in itself. First announced in November 2003, survey completion issues and a change of research supplier (from NOP to TNS) at the pilot stage meant that the initial findings released last month arrived a year later than originally anticipated.

And this success – however belated – has come at a price: a cool £1m to be exact, though this reflects as much the scale of the IPA's ambitions as it does the various trials and tribulations that had to be overcome.

Any doubts about the importance and uniqueness of what the IPA has and is trying to achieve were laid to rest at the launch itself. The great and the good of the advertising, media and research worlds sat and listened as correspondents from the BBC, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal took notes.

IPA president David Pattison hailed the study as a "world first", while the chairman of the media committee of the World Federation of Advertisers, Adam Swann hinted at the level of interest Touchpoints was generating across the globe.

The mood was understandably congratulatory – yet there lingered a nagging concern. As Swann said, the survey will only be "as good as the implementation". Its success will be in the hands of the advertisers, media owners and agencies buying the data, and in how they analyse, interpret and use the information provided to them.

In other words, how much return can be generated on the not insubstantial amount of money invested in Touchpoints? If the answer is "quite a lot", we can expect the IPA to begin preparations for Touchpoints 2 in earnest. The institute's research director Lynne Robinson is already mulling an increase in sample size for any eventual second outing. However, the study's future will remain uncertain until customers have had the chance to digest the mass of information provided to them. Topline findings seen by Research can be best summarised as "interesting, but…". Only time will tell whether Touchpoints remains a curiosity or becomes an essential media research and planning tool.

April | 2006