WFA Media Charter
Financing of Media research
- Media vendors should include media research at their cost, as it provides them with the "currency" for valuing the media time or space they sell.
- Depending on the market structure, agencies can also contribute to media research funding. Where that is the case, advertisers consider it to be an integral part of the service they provide.
- Since advertisers pay the cost of media through their media budgets, they are already indirectly funding the (total or overwhelming majority of) costs of audience measurement and information across all media. They therefore do not accept the principle of having to pay for it twice and should obtain it at no further or additional cost.
- Whether they offer goods or services, advertisers have a fundamental need to understand their consumers in order to:
- ensure that there is a demand for their products
- find convincing ways to demonstrate how they fulfil that demand.
- Advertisers therefore spend heavily on extensive market research. They expect agencies and media companies similarly to invest in media research to:
- ensure what they recommend (agencies) or offer (media) meet their customers' (advertisers') needs
- convincingly demonstrate the effectiveness of their proposed 'products'
- confirm to what extent the time or space purchased has delivered the expected/targeted media performance.
- Advertisers believe that companies whose business involves generating added value using media research and audience measurement data (for example: media owners, agencies; media auditors; research companies) should pay for the data they use.
Questions or comments? Mail [email protected]
