The CMDC’s Unity Project closes in on data integration

The Unity Project committee will have data to begin analyzing early next month following a presentation of the test results from the second of two methodologies under review by the Toronto-based Canadian Media Directors’ Council (CMDC).

Hugh Dow, the president of Toronto’s M2 Universal who is leading the data integration initiative on behalf of the CMDC, expects the committee will be able to determine if the tests were successful – and which approach the industry might take – by the end of October. Originally it was hoped that there would be some results this past February, but Dow says the assembling of the various audience data into a standardized format prior to testing took much longer than anticipated.

Last fall, the CMDC hired Hans Vorster of Toronto’s Totum Research as project director and chose two different techniques to test. One is a data fusion method, a joint venture of Sampling Modelling and Research Technologies of Toronto and Immediate.de of Germany; the other is a MultiBasing system developed by Telmar-Harris of Toronto.

These methodologies are designed to consolidate product and lifestyle research from different audience measurement surveys to emulate a single-source database, one that collects both product and media usage data from the same respondents. The existing PMB, NADbank and BBM’s radio return-to-sample (RTS) studies are being used for the test.

Data fusion links data clusters from demographically/psychographically similar respondents in various studies together. MultiBasing connects disparate surveys using a statistical methodology that preserves the correlation between respondent media and product usage.

BBM’s Montreal PPM launch on schedule

BBM Canada will have its Personal People Meter (PPM) panel set up and collecting television data in the francophone Quebec market in early September. More than 530 households have signed on to the PPM panel and more than 108 television stations (Canadian and U.S.) spilling into the market have had their signals encoded to be passively collected by the portable, pager-sized device.

Ron Bremner, BBM’s VP, television, says the existing set-top meter panel of 365 households will remain in place until all stakeholders are satisfied with the quality and accuracy of the data being collected by the PPMs. (The set-top boxes use picture-matching technology to identify the programs being viewed while the PPMs pick up encoded signals of television and eventually radio as well.)

Bremner says, ‘All of the signals that represent virtually 100% of the viewing done in francophone Quebec and Montreal are encoded. We got a lot of co-operation from broadcasters.

‘We have also encoded radio signals, just to have some experience with it. The plan is to test PPM for radio in Montreal either in the spring or fall of 2004, once we get the current (TV) service established.’

The Canadian media buying and selling community, as well as many others around the world, are waiting to see how PPMs perform in Quebec.

The technology, developed by Arbitron of New York, has drawn fire during its U.S. testing, both north and south of the border because of users’ low compliance levels and the system’s propensity to pick up ‘accidental’ signals, those within hearing distance that don’t actually represent viewing by the panel member.

On the plus side, PPM is the only technology that will enable the measurement of out-of-home viewing as well as the movement of radio measurement from paper diaries to continuous electronic data collection.