For decades, the trading currency for most media has been based on consumer media patterns measured by a non-overlapping set of "industry" research metrics.
There are some deep-rooted - and now institutionalised - problems with this system. For instance, the idea that we do well to base pricing on what happened last year often seems flaky in the present market, where so much is in flux.
When a disrupter of business practices as fundamental as search engines and the internet comes along and thrives, it is wrong to expect there will be no seismic impact on other media. The media landscape is due for further disruption. Developments in mobile advertising and search are bound to upset the existing balance.
Furthermore, it is time to accept that the idea of "joint industry research" is, and has been for some time, a misnomer that does nothing to help in these difficult times.
The industry I am employed in encompasses all media channels. Planners have always looked to invest across channels and now more buying teams will become a single investment department working across all media, as MediaCom's buying teams have done. But we seem no closer to an agreed industry audience measurement system across all media than we were five years ago.
Certainly, media research within each medium has evolved. But the idea of being able to trade and evaluate performance across all media channels with a consistent definition of audiences is not in sight.
Neither is consistency in the speed of release of data - TV data is available overnight or after seven days, while some media update quarterly.
Press readership is still defined by NRS as "anyone who has read for two minutes or more". Posters are measured in terms of anyone who could realistically view the poster; TV defines viewers as people in the room when the TV is on, and radio requires you to listen for at least five minutes within the quarter hour measured.
Great thought and a huge amount of expertise and investment has gone into each individual measurement system by medium, but we now need the same level of expertise to devise audience measurement that works across all media.
It is time to move away from trading based on different ways of measuring audiences by channel and work towards a cross-industry currency.
If the new system can't be based on audience exposure, perhaps it will need to be based on what works client by client.
There is more than one model that could replace the current structures, but in any case it is time for a complete overhaul.
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