Top Three Most Fascinating Takeaways from the 2017 Mediascope Client Conference

I was fortunate enough to receive an invite to the Mediascope Client Conference held Moscow late last month, hosted by our client Mediascope; and I was so highly impressed with the event overall that I have been inspired to share with you the top three things I learned from my trip.

First, here’s a little background on Mediascope. Until 2016, the agency was part of TNS, and since its formation in 1999 has been measuring media consumption amongst citizens of the Russian Federation.

I’ve never been to Moscow before (or anywhere in Russia for that matter) and so I was excited to be invited, alongside my colleague, Craig Parker, from our Operations Team. After completing visa forms – and waiting anxiously to see if I was approved – we finally arrived in Moscow late in the afternoon, a couple of days before the big event.

So, what did I learn from the Mediascope Client Conference this year?

Each measurement service is currently grappling with the same looming issue worldwide: how to accurately measure all the new channels and ways of consuming content – many of which fall into the grey area between traditional siloes, and specifically the convergence around what we now call ‘video’. In fact, it’s part of the reason why we work with Mediascope.

However, Russia’s geography and history pose some challenges that make it difficult to adopt practices from other markets without first considering their unique circumstances.

1. Markets Within a Market

More than any other country, Russia spans 11 time zones – 10 of the 11 time zones cover a contiguous landmass. This means cities can be isolated and therefore, a local media market services the population and the economy in that region. Each individual region requires a robust standalone measurement to act as the currency between the local media owners and the agencies or brands that operate within that locality. Compare this to some of the leading measurement markets in the Nordics and Western Europe with only one time zone and 5m+ people, and you can start to appreciate the circumstances are very different.

It is for this reason that Mediascope invested in local server infrastructure in 2017 to capture mobile internet behaviour in each city – and why, in 2018, Mediascope will be moving to RealityMine’s on-device data capture which negates the issues of distance between devices and servers.

2. Russia, the Land of the Second Home?

In the UK, if someone owns a second home in the countryside, this suggests that they are either a member of aristocracy or they are a city banker. Owning one home is hard enough for the average Briton these days, let alone two. So, it was with great surprise to hear that one of the main challenges of TV measurement in Russia is how to measure TV consumption in the ‘country houses’. What are these country houses? What percentage of the population owns a second home that makes it such a major measurement challenge? Surely it wouldn’t account for a significant share.

Well, as it turns out, I received a history lesson by way of explanation. During Soviet times with the industrialisation and urbanisation of the Russian population, the State provided plots of land in the country for the apartment-living city folk to go to for weekends and holidays. People built small wooden houses and the land was used to grow vegetables and distil vodka; in fact, it still is today. Food was not always plentiful under the Soviet planned economy and so, this was a way for families to supplement their diets, and a place to spend time outside of the cities.

As a result, nearly all urban Russians have access to a family country house or ‘Dacha.’ And it is for this reason that measurement of TV consumption at these properties is such an issue – one that Mediacope is addressing through a Dacha Measurement Panel, to accurately capture weekend and holiday TV viewing.

3. Russia is Only Three Hours Away from the UK

This might sound like an underwhelming learning, that London to Moscow takes three hours. However, with the historical divide during the Cold War and the current situation with Ukraine, Crimea and Trump’s election, Russia certainly feels a lot further away. Russia also has completely different digital and ecommerce brands than we have in the UK (or anywhere else within the American sphere of influence).

Yes, the giants of Google, Facebook and Amazon are present, but they play second fiddle to the Russian giants of Yandex (much better maps than Google who also offer a taxi service via Uber – why didn’t Google think of that?), VK (far more popular in Russia than Facebook), and the Chinese retailers such as Ali Express (which have a far greater footprint than Amazon).

The learning here is you cannot assume that just because global brands dominate in your own market that it holds true for other countries. Particularly within the mobile measurement area, this also means we need to bring our local market knowledge into play and ensure that when new releases of IOS or Android occur, we’re checking for any impact on the relevant local brands in our clients’ market(s) and focussing our product development on areas of most needed. Not just in the US or the UK, but where our clients and our client’s clients are based.

Finally, as a side note, if you are ever given the chance to visit Moscow, you should accept without hesitation. I found it to be a beautiful and fascinating city with a first-class public transport infrastructure that enables easy navigation, and people who are equally warm and welcoming. However, I’d warn you to avoid the roads and crazy taxi drivers!