The conference takes place from Sunday, 21 to Wednesday, 24 August at Elephant Hills Resort in Zimbabwe, where delegates will be able to experience the beauty of Victoria Falls, enjoy dinner under the stars and catch a plethora of great speakers – including the following presentations.

You had me at first swipe - a BBG/DW joint journey into using DW’s VideoMetrics app for qualitative research in Russia: Anna Hofmann (DW) and Sonja Gloeckle (BBG)

In what may be the first ever fully collaborative qualitative study among international broadcasters, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and Deutsche Welle (DW) conducted a joint research study in Russia to find out more about the news consumption habits and the media literacy of Russian target groups.

Using DW’s new real-time assessment app VideoMetrics, three TV services for the Russian speaking market were evaluated. This presentation by Werner Neven, director of Market and Media Research Deutsche Welle shows the benefits and challenges of doing qualitative research jointly with another broadcaster, as well as the benefits of VideoMetrics.

Reaching African Audiences through online, mobile and social media: which measurements really matter?

With the emergence of digital media, and the rise of online consumption in Africa, this paper seeks to explore the opportunities for audience measurement and investigate which measurements really matter. As more African consumers spend more time online, advertiser spending still lags behind on this media, compared to traditional.

Waithera Kabiru, digital manager, integrated, marketing and communication at Coca-Cola Central, East and West Africa speaks about how this could be due to the lack of attribution of digital media to transactional value. A marketers role is to deliver appropriate messaging at every stage of the consumer journey, from awareness, demand, acquisition, transaction and retention. During each of these stages, it is important to measure consumer behaviour to determine the effectiveness of the messaging.

The measurement needs to capture real business outcomes across the consumer journey, whilst measuring incremental lift and attribution. For consumer packaged goods like Coca-Cola, researchers are curious to understand which measurements not only translate to brand love, but into value. Digital media has always boasted of its ability to measure accurately consumer actions or behaviour. This paper looks at the current measurement tools and research methods used to determine transactional value and assess the metrics that matter, and those that do not.

Audience Based Buying - What is it and why does it matter?

Moving on to the realm of digital advertising, Milton Tshabalala, media director at Nielsen and Samkelisiwe Makhathini, commercial manager at Nielsen, consider why marketers still struggle to reach their audience, when digital advertising allows marketers an unprecedented ability to connect with their desired audience, however niche, and see how advertising performed.

The answer, they argue, “lies in the way we measure and transact on digital media - our language still revolves around ‘what happened’ instead of ‘who I reached’”.  Marketers need to shift to audience-based metrics, which measure who was reached, instead of what happened. The Nielsen team will illustrate this shift and how marketers are making this transition, as well as looking at best practices around how to use audience-based metrics to increase audience reach and maximise the efficiency of digital advertising spend.

This year’s PAMRO Conference boasts a line-up of local and international speakers from across the media measurement landscape. Between presentations, delegates will have the opportunity to network against the backdrop of the Victoria Falls or while having dinner under the stars.

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