ARF Audience Measurement 7.0

Summary
At the ARF Audience Measurement 2012 conference, a team from AT&T mobility with Nielsen discussed the problem of "metrics overload". AT&T's problem was it was tracking more than 100 advertising performance metrics, generating more information than it could use. The team determined which metrics really mattered. These turned out to be brand recall and message recall; other metrics were statistically insignificant. Through this model, for the year ending in March 2012, AT&T had a 35% lead in message recall versus the competition. AT&T Mobile also uses the results to streamline copy evaluation, based around four parts: likeability, persuasion, uniqueness and message importance, while Nielsen determines ad strength with five simple day-after recall questions. As evidence, the AT&T research team offered their findings that brand and message recall account for roughly one-third of the sales generated by television advertising.

Summary
This report from the ARF's Audience Measurement conference covers research into mobile usage trends in emerging and developing markets, and concludes that these areas will provide most growth over the coming decade. Already, more of the world's population has access to mobile (87%) than clean water (83%). Key findings discussed include: mobile will remain the primary access point to the internet for many people (who will never use a PC); mobile is "much more than fun" in emerging economies; and the tools of mobile payments will enable a variety of financial-service transactions. Mobile's facilitation of social networking in emerging markets is predicted to play four roles in economic and societal development: business (to discuss prices and plan strategy); health (patient and caregiver support); politics (provide information and organize communities); social (facilitate diverse social connections at home and work).

Summary
This report from the ARF's Audience Measurement conference discusses results from a long-running research program into mobile data usage in 15 countries around the world. Feature phones remain the dominant handset globally, since many developing and rural areas are unable to support the bandwidth demands of smartphones (but this will change). Four key mobile trends are identified: simple usage (e.g. SMS, voice, mobile web, photography) will drive early expansion; more sophisticated usage (e.g. streaming video, advertising) will follow; new business models for mobile will increase, particularly in banking; and usage will extend further as connections offer new opportunities to consumers and marketers alike.

Summary
This report from the ARF's Audience Measurement 7.0 conference - themed the 'measurement crisis' - covers presentations from Kellogg, Facebook, comScore, ABC and CNN about the challenges presented by cross-platform audiences in the digital age. Kellogg discusses the role of digital in the company's own media mix, where investment follows performance. Facebook references a study of 60 campaigns on the social network, of which 70% registered a three-fold ROI. And a separate presentation from comScore focuses on research into Starbucks' Facebook fans, which found a 38% lift in purchase incidence. Separately, broadcaster ABC presents its "smile research" - pilot work into using smiling and happiness as an audience metric. And finally, CNN shares research on how the proliferation of screens is changing media consumption, based on a study of basketball viewing.