Touchpoints survey gets third outing

UK-- A third Touchpoints survey of multimedia usage in the UK is being planned for next year, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) revealed today.

Two years elapsed between the first study in 2006 and the second, data for which was released this summer.

IPA research director Lynne Robinson said there would be a full review of Touchpoints before going into wave three to address the changes seen in the communications landscape since plans for the survey were first formulated in 2004.

Touchpoints puts PDA diaries in the hands of 5,000 people and asks them to record their media usage and activities at half-hour intervals over a seven-day period.

Data from this is then fused with the UK's various media currencies – including Barb (TV), NRS (print) and Rajar (radio) – to create an integrated planning database (IPD). For those media which do not have an established industry currency, such as internet/search, SMS and direct mail, the IPA has created a standard series of probabilities to allow users to feed in data from other proprietary sources to produce “a true multimedia picture”.

Using this database, “users can create and evaluate multimedia scenarios against a wide range of communications objectives and audiences, with combined coverage and frequency as key outputs,” the IPA said.

The Touchpoints 2 IPD was officially launched today.

Author: Brian Tarran