In a blog for Mediatel, Newsworks director of research and insight Denise Turner urges the media industry to give up the focus on platforms and put content first
Aware of the challenges that insight teams face measuring consumers’ behaviour in a rapidly evolving media landscape, Turner emphasises the need to keep up with their habits to deliver effective advertising.
“If people don’t see, hear, or otherwise come into contact with an ad,” she says, “how can they possibly be expected to respond, let alone go on and buy the product?”
This means ditching our understanding of “digital” as a catch-all term alongside “print”, “radio” or “TV”, instead recognising that the new media ecosystem means content can be consumed in many different ways, using many different platforms on- and offline.
On the size of news brands’ online reach, Turner writes: “Over 17 million people are accessing via online channels every day alone, rising to almost 40 million across a month, with routes in now ranging from Instagram to Snap to TikTok.
“Given this evidence of a medium in rude heath audience-wise, it’s frustrating and frankly a little tedious when measurement and forecasts solely refer to newspapers in their print format – not to mention misleading.”
She adds: “We need to trade in our preoccupation with platforms and adopt a content-led approach.”
Read Denise Turner’s challenge to the media industry for 2022 in her full blog for Mediatel here.
