The COVID crisis is fostering long term changes
In the middle of unprecedented global changes, it is hard to raise our heads above the short-term challenges we face to try and see where we are heading, to assess what will endure as a structural change and what was a short-term lockdown-imposed passing phenomenon. It is too early - and probably foolhardy - to attempt to make concrete predictions. What our roundtable does provide is assistance in trying to make sense of what is going on around us, to start to consider which behavior changes that relate directly to media usage, advertising and consumption are likely to stick in the long term.
Above all, though, the key question is this: should we wait for a ‘new normal’ or are we actually likely to be in a permanent state of flux, a state of perpetual adaptation for a number of years to come?
We may well have reached a point where the media and advertising industries have to stop planning for a return to normal, stop delaying decisions in the hope of a vaccine and instead work out how to cope with an extended period of uncertainty that could last many years.
The longer this period lasts, the more permanent will be the changes in behavior and media consumption, but the priority for our industry has to be to adapt and change, to take action now to ensure we do all survive and reach that ‘new normal’, however far away it may be.
In the foreseeable future there is likely to be less advertising expenditure and therefore less money to fund measurement currencies. And these currencies will need to reflect the behaviour of a more privacy-conscious yet more digital-savvy society. There will be demand for more measurement innovation on smaller budgets.
At GfK we recognize that need and have built a connected consumer community. Through data partnerships and fusions, we capture sales of smaller consumer goods and brands, and all purchase occasions including out-of-home. We connect all touchpoints to the actual purchase via our long-established passive cross-media measurement capabilities. Coupled with hybrid media measurement methodologies, we will continue to provide flexible and trusted measurement of media and consumer behaviour as we navigate our way to the ‘new normal’.