Industry Structure and Skill Set Individual Report

Industry Structure and Skill Set Individual Report
The JICS, or the Joint Industry Committee, are all the main media surveys. They are made up of media owners, media agencies, professional bodies and clients. The media owners pay the largest sum of the cost of running the JICS as it is their media that is being analysed. The JICS main role is media measurement, which is when media owners and agencies calculate how many of a given audience a medium can reach at any given time. The BARB and the NRS are the two JICS being focused on in this report. This report will look at the future for JICS in a world were media is changing from offline to online.
The BARB is the official source of television viewing figures in the UK it “commission’s specialist research companies to collect data that represent the television viewing behaviour of the UK’s 26 million TV households.” [Barb. (2012)]. The BARB conducts it research by having weekly surveys of viewership and then breaking down the data into which channels have been watched the most over that time period. These figures are then used by the media agencies and owners to calculate a fee for using time slots on certain channels at specific times.
The NRS, or national readership survey, The NRS provides “the most authoritative and valued audience research in use for print advertising trading in the UK.” [NRS (2012)]. The survey covers over 250 of Britain 's major newspapers and magazines, showing the size and nature of the audiences they achieve. Data on readership is collected through a continuous 12 month survey, and consists of 36,000 with people aged 15+ a year, selected at random. This provides year on year readership data to media agencies and owners.
The BARB defines viewership as anyone in the same room as a turned on TV set; this means that people who may not actually be consuming the media are taken down as viewers by BARB. The NRS defines readership as Average Issue Readership or AIR. AIR is the number of people who have read or looked at an average issue of a publication. The definition is based on those who say they have last read a publication within its publication interval. The NRS considers anyone who has read or looked at a publication for more than 2 minutes as part of the publications readership. The JICS have used the same model of defining viewership and readership for the past 6 decades; this linear model is used to assess the general reach of a media product.
The JICS model of how people communicate with media is based on the Shannon and weaver model from 1949, this model is based on a linear understanding of communications, with 8 elements. The first element is the source, or where the media has originated from, this is the message they wish another to receive. The next element is the encoder, which decides what format the message will take, it “takes the concept that the source wants sent out, and puts it into a suitable format for later interpretation” [URI. (2010)], the message is the information or idea that is being communicated from one end of the model to the other, in human communication the message usually has a distinct meaning. The Shannon and Weaver model however does not take substance into account, rather that the message was being transmitted in the first place. It is essential for meaningful information to have the right channel, which is the route the message travels on; this is another one of the elements. Noise is one of the key elements as it is inevitable that it will affect the communication process through the model. The Decoder is the element that interprets the message into something the receiver will understand, this is essentially the same as the source and encoder, only reversed. One of the key elements of the model is the receiver; in order for the message to be executed there must be a second party at the end of the channel the source has used. The receiver takes in the message that the source has sent out.

[Stanford. (2011)]
The JICS have used this model from the 1950s; however they have removed the encoder and receiver and changed it to message and target audience. The JICS model focuses even more on the opportunity rather than the actual reach of the media to the target audience. This means that they can calculate an estimated reach to an audience and no actual data. This is not good considering the future of media being seen to move away from offline and more to online, as it will become harder for the JICs to compete against online based companies that can provide real time figures and concise audience response to a message.

Target audience
Medium
Message

When looking at the JICS model the strategic development director at Starcom MediaVest Group, Jim Kite stated that in the digital age clients want simplicity, "TV trading still demands reach and ratings but when it comes to effectiveness, they want outcome information," [Mediatel. (2008)]. This shows that even leading figures within the media industry feel that the world is changing and the demand for the trading currency was not the size of audience but more on an outcome based scale. This shows how the JICs need to adapt to the new ways media is being delivered to an audience.

The Shannon and Weaver model was created in 1949, which means it is over 60 years old. It was made when mass media was very powerful and in a time when people were very naive to propaganda. It is biased on the argument that skilful media usage can get people to do what you want and in order to do this they need more exposure to the media. The way the model sees offline media, i.e. viewership and readership is in potential opportunity to reach an audience instead of how many actual people the media reached. When considering the 12 - 3000 theory, which is that a person is open to 3000 messages a day from media, and only fully comprehends 12, the model can be seen as not being able to be adapted to the digital age, as there becomes more online ways for media to reach its specific receiver or audience. The model was built in an age where online media outlets did not exist, so as the digital age continues to grow, so the Shannon and Weaver model will become more outdated. Looking at how media agencies deal with the change brought by digital media is linked to understanding if the JICs can also adapt to a changing media environment.
One model of communication that may apply to digital media is Schramm’s model of communication. This was one of the first to alter the mathematical model of Shannon and Weaver. He conceived of decoding and encoding as activities maintained simultaneously by sender and receiver, meaning that the message can go two ways.

This model of communication could be adopted by the JICs in order to better understand how the users reacts or feels about a message, this links to digital and it is much easier for a message recipient to express feedback over online media than with offline media. This model could also work with digital as it is interactive. The model also takes into account direct and indirect communication, the difference between a message being shown directly to the interpreter, or the interpreter not being the intended recipient of the message. This works better than the Shannon and Weaver model for digital feedback as the Shannon and Weaver model does not take into account the difference between messages, and counts the opportunity as a whole, whereas the Schramm model can state if the audience for the message is being targeted to listen to the message or not.
Zenith Optimedia is a prime example of a media agency changing the way it operates in order to compete in the digital age. As a key part of the Publicis, “Zenith’s purchased various digital media companies such as Zed digital network and of Moxie” [M and M global. (2012)], this move towards becoming more competitive in the digital market is supported by the appointment of new talent in areas of the company, including: Sebastian Danet to chief executive of Zenith Optimedia France, Nicole Pruesse to CEO of Zenith Optimedia Germany and Fernando Rodriguez to CEO Zenith Optimedia Spain. These moves internally along with the appointment of Steve King as General CEO in March show how keen Zenith are to become competitive in the digital age. Working with companies such as HTC, L’Oreal and Reckitt Benckiser, Zenith as a ROI agency wants to provide a return on investment; however the use of online ads can extend the longevity of the media, and hit the target audience of the companies. All three of these companies use digital media to promote themselves, and this can be seen as Zenith adapting the new digital age, and moving away from following the Shannon and Weaver model.
While Zenith Optimedia is adapting to the new digital age, Maxus, which is part of the WPP group, focuses more on a planning philosophy called 'Relationship Media’.[ M and M global. (2012)], which is focused on building more profitable relationships between consumers and brands. It combines the disciplines of communications planning and customer relationship marketing with real-time data analytics. A system developed by Kelly Clark, global chief executive, This involves digital media, but Maxus focus more on media planning and buying and direct response. Being a relatively new agency, Maxus’s clients include Netflix, Nokia and Vodafone. These companies all rely on being digital and online, being as they produce allow or depend on online as a business, this and the fact that Maxus is a new company, that already has high profile clients shows that they have the ability to change in the coming digital age, analysing these two companies shows how most media agencies are preparing to move away from following the Shannon and Weaver model and more into understanding how to communicate a media to the consumer in a digital age.
When looking at ways media companies can gain data on the consumer and how they react to a media, Cost per thousand is a method Cost per thousand is a basis of showing an advert to one thousand viewers. It is used in marketing as a benchmark to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium. Cost per thousand is calculated by dividing the cost of an advertising placement by the number of impressions (expressed in thousands) that it generates. Cost per thousand is useful in comparing the relative efficiency of different advertising opportunities or media and in evaluating the costs of overall campaigns. It works very well with the Shannon and Weaver model as they both calculate the opportunity level and not the actual level of how many people a message will reach. As a result both cannot give feedback that contains actual data, only a percentage of how many people an advert could reach, or an estimate of how much it is going to cost to reach a thousand people with a message.
With the rise of online media outlets such as Google and Facebook, which can provide companies with actual user data that relates specifically to the companies adverts, the JICs face heavy competition in collecting readership and viewership data. The implications of the move towards greater digitalisation of media on both these surveys along with the rise of online companies means the JICs will need to adapt to the change in order to still be able to provide a service to media owners and agencies. One way in which it is doing this is through the “JIC in-a-box”[Mediaweek. (2012)]. JIC-in-a-box software allows media buyers to “select postcode sectors, drive-time areas or specific geographies such as towns, counties or newspaper catchment areas, and run an audience report for selected papers and websites within that area.”[Mediaweek. (2012)].
JIC in-a-box shows that the JICs are actively trying to adapt to the changing media world that sees the model of communication they have used to identify the opportunity of putting a message across to a receiver slowly become obsolete, as the growth of Google analytics and Facebook ads continues, the JICs will need to adapt even more if they are to stay the primary source of viewership and readership information for media owners and agencies in the future. The rapid development of media companies acceptance of digital media as shown by Maxus and Zenith Optimedia means that the JIC’s will have to follow the same path in order to stay relevant to the media industry.

References
Barb. (2012). how we do what we do. Available: http://www.barb.co.uk/resources/reference-documents/how-we-do-what-we-do. Last accessed 10th dec 2012.
NRS. (2012). What we do. Available: http://www.nrs.co.uk/purpose.html. Last accessed 10th dec 2012.
Mediatel. (2008). The future of media research: The Jics. Available: http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2012/02/08/future-of-media-research-the-jics/. Last accessed 13 dec 2012.
M and M global. (2012). Zenith Optimedia profile. Available: http://www.mandmglobal.com/global-accounts/agency-profiles/zenithoptimedia.aspx. Last accessed 13 dec 2012
M and M global. (2012). Company profile . Available: http://www.mandmglobal.com/global-accounts/agency-profiles/maxus.aspx. Last accessed 13 dec 2012.
Mediaweek. (2012). JIC in-a-box regional tool. Available: http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/1084225/Jic-in-a-box-regional-planning-tool-revamped/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH. Last accessed 13 dec 2012. shkaminski. (2009). communication models. Available: http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Handouts/Communication%20Models.htm#SchrammsInteractiveModel1954. Last accessed 13 dec 2012.
Stanford. (2011). Semantic Conceptions of Information. Available: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information-semantic/figure3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information-semantic/&h=335&w=680&sz=26&tbnid=H6eGW. Last accessed 11th Dec 2012.
URI. (2010). The Shannon and Weaver model. Available: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/lsc/Faculty/Carson/508/03Website/Hayden/ShanWeav.html. Last accessed 11th Dec 2012.

References: Barb. (2012). how we do what we do. Available: http://www.barb.co.uk/resources/reference-documents/how-we-do-what-we-do. Last accessed 10th dec 2012. NRS. (2012). What we do. Available: http://www.nrs.co.uk/purpose.html. Last accessed 10th dec 2012. Mediatel. (2008). The future of media research: The Jics. Available: http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2012/02/08/future-of-media-research-the-jics/. Last accessed 13 dec 2012. M and M global. (2012). Zenith Optimedia profile. Available: http://www.mandmglobal.com/global-accounts/agency-profiles/zenithoptimedia.aspx. Last accessed 13 dec 2012 M and M global. (2012). Company profile . Available: http://www.mandmglobal.com/global-accounts/agency-profiles/maxus.aspx. Last accessed 13 dec 2012. Mediaweek. (2012). JIC in-a-box regional tool. Available: http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/1084225/Jic-in-a-box-regional-planning-tool-revamped/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH. Last accessed 13 dec 2012. shkaminski. (2009). communication models. Available: http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Handouts/Communication%20Models.htm#SchrammsInteractiveModel1954. Last accessed 13 dec 2012. Stanford. (2011). Semantic Conceptions of Information. Available: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information-semantic/figure3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information-semantic/&h=335&w=680&sz=26&tbnid=H6eGW. Last accessed 11th Dec 2012. URI. (2010). The Shannon and Weaver model. Available: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/lsc/Faculty/Carson/508/03Website/Hayden/ShanWeav.html. Last accessed 11th Dec 2012.