The future of media research and JICs - with the IPA's Dan Flynn and Graeme Griffiths

Every year, The Media Leader and its parent Adwanted UK celebrate the best of UK media research at the Adwanted Media Research Awards (AMRAs). Robust media research is an important industry resource. It helps inform and steer conversation and our understanding of marketing best practice – as well as the incentives that often get in the way of implementing it. This year’s awards include 6 new categories and 22 in total, covering every element of media research. One notable new award is the Denise Turner Award for Best Use of Joint Industry Data in a Research Project, in honour of the late media researcher and friend of *The Media Leader*, who died last autumn. This year’s awards will be open for entry beginning Tuesday the 1st of September, with an early bird deadline on Wednesday the 7th of October and a standard deadline on Wednesday the 14th of October. Ahead of the opening, host Jack Benjamin sat down with this year’s judging panel co-chairs Dan Flynn and Graeme Griffiths. Flynn and Griffiths are joint directors of media research for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). They jointly succeeded Turner in the role in February of this year. Apart from leading the development of the IPA’s TouchPoints research and other industry benchmark surveys like the IPA Agency Census, they also represent the IPA on all of the major joint-industry currencies. The pair spoke recently about what makes for exceptional media research, why research isn’t always put into practice, and what innovations JICs can and should be driving to better meet the needs of advertisers. **Highlights:** **7:33:** Judging the AMRAs: What makes for good media research? **10:23:** Why doesn't research always lead to impact and behavioural change? **19:50:** New AMRA awards and Denise Turner's legacy **24:49:** How JICs need to evolve to meet advertiser demands **30:06:** The Barb-YouTube relationship and agency demand for new JICs for platforms and podcasting **35:22:** Is Origin the way to cross-media measurement nirvana? **42:29:** The future of media research: AI, synthetic data, and in-housing research **Related articles:** AMRAs add six categories including Denise Turner award Measurement can’t be an afterthought — with IPA’s Denise Turner A round-up of some of the best research of the year Podcasting needs its own JIC – Jack Davenport, Goalhanger CEO Will YouTube’s new definition of a ‘view’ undermine its effort to tap into TV budgets?