Viewpoint 49,4 The future of market research

Sam Smith

This is 2030. Welcome to the future...

These are the offices of JIC Media – big aren’t they? That’s partly because they are in the process of going global. Let me introduce you to the CEO, Mr X, a man of vision. It was he who finally managed to rally the various media related industries in 2015 to create JIC Media.

By 2015 the existing media currencies were under massive pressure. TV and Radio delivered via the internet were ubiquitous. Everyone had broadband, mobile phones, which had been universal as far back as 2006, were now everyone’s window on the world. Even in 2006 people reported the loss of a mobile twice as fast as the loss of a wallet, and that’s before they really began to explore their true potential. By 2015 they became your life.

And joint industry committees for measurement (JIC’s), although generally very well run and rigorous in their methods, became a mass of double counting. TV Jic’s measured TV, the internet and mobile. Radio Jic’s measured Radio, Radio on the TV, the internet and mobile. Internet Jic’s measured internet, TV, Radio and mobile. And in 2010 Mobile Jics started to spring up to measure mobile (oh, and TV, Radio and the internet on mobile).

Mr X had enough of his employees spending hours trying to piece together the cross media picture. He’d had enough of new technologies not being measured quickly enough. And he’d had enough of conflicting pieces of information.

He spoke to the big Radio and TV broadcasters. He spoke to the big internet players. He spoke to the mobile networks. He spoke to advertisers and media planners, and gradually he came up with a plan.

It took a while, the technology wasn’t quite there yet, but in 2019 JIC Media started to give us some data. The solution that was arrived at was complex. Homes were recruited, and all panellists were given unobtrusive wristbands to wear. All their new technology was fitted with specialist software to both sense the presence of a respondent and to send the device information back to a central computer.

The panel wasn’t big enough for the fragmented society of 2019, so it was supplemented with return path data from the operators involved.

JIC Media also needed a slightly different operating model than previous JICs. It had to be more independent in order that Mr X could keep up with industry changes, and that required a great deal of bravery and trust from all involved.

Since then Mr X and JIC Media haven’t looked back. In 2025 the government passed a law requiring all new technologies to be JIC Media compatible. And as the digital revolution is a poor respecter of countries boundaries, in 2030, Mr X is in the process of taking the company global.

And who was Mr X? I was rather hoping he was you ... but then again it may be me!

Sam Smith, BBC.

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