The Single Source of Truth: The quest for meaningful audience measurement

SCA’s radio ratings may not be as buoyant as they’d like at present but digital is going through the roof. SCA’s online presence is now ranked 16th among all publishers on all devices and 10th on mobile behind behemoths such as Google and Nine MSN.
 
“A year ago, we were nowhere. We weren’t even in the top 100,” says Clive Dickens who has been with the company just over a year as its Director of Digital and Innovation.
 
What drives that growth is a combination of scale and compelling content. According to Dickens all 800+ people who work on content for SCA’s radio and television assets are also charged with producing digital content.
 
Along with SCA, the other radio companies are also refocusing their energies towards digital. Nova Entertainment recently rebranded from DMG to better reflect a wider role as content creators and distributors across multiple platforms.
 
Says Dickens, “We’re all heading towards a consolidated media world where we’ll talk less about the power of radio or the power of television or social and we’ll talk more about the power of personalities, content and people.”
 
But as yet, there are no ratings that take into account the way people behave in such a brave, new, connected world where they may go from listening to radio, to a related website or facebook page and then signing up for, say, Songl or iHeart.
 
“That’s what we’re working towards,” says Dickens. “We call it the Single Source of Truth. It’s nonsensical that we have an OzTam number, a RegTam number, a GfK radio number and a Nielsen online number. The reality is that clients want a single source of truth. Shareholders would love a single source of truth. Digital people like me want it because we’re continually trying to prove that we live in a kind of connected, shareable eco-system.”
 
To that end SCA is running pilot studies in some of the bigger regional markets like Canberra, Newcastle and Gold Coast where they have “the full set” including FTA TV, FTA Radio, web and mobile sites and large social communities.
 
“We’re running trials to try to understand how audiences move across devices. We’re in the very early stage of that,” says Dickens.
 
It’s no secret, though, that digital revenue is growing fast while traditional media is struggling.
 
“Advertisers go where the audience is. And at the moment, audiences are flocking to social. That’s where the money’s going,” says Dickens.
 
“There’s a couple of key emerging trends. One is the ability for clients to connect with audiences on larger platforms and do integrated responses. Clients like iSelect, P&O and NAB brief to us isn’t solely about radio ads, it’s about how can you create some content for us that we can share across our channels.
 
“The most interesting clients at the smarter agencies are utilizing the media company’s strengths rather than the industry’s traditional distribution channels.
 
“The other thing that’s emerging is that everyone wants ‘earned’ media that uses the virality of the connected world we live in. Whether it’s Tiger Airlines cheeky video of the week or Snickers controversial viral of the month, everybody is expecting to see more investment going into earned media.
 
“That’s an opportunity and a threat to traditional media companies. It’s definitely a threat to those traditional companies who just go, ‘We’re big, therefore you should use us!’ Well, so’s the internet so’s YouTube, so’s facebook. You can’t survive by being big alone. You have to have scale but you also have to have innovation,” says Clive Dickens (above left).
 
Wooden Sculpture in Sanctuary of Truth. Pattaya, Thailand PHOTO: shutterstock