The media touchpoints of Brits

The IPA (Institute of Parishioners in Advertising) has published its TouchPoints survey that describes in a week in the life of a “representative sample" of the GB adult population during late 2007/2008.

It’s worth a quick look, although it doesn’t contain any great insights. What did strike me was the way the reporting of the results was polarised by age, rather than income, education, geography, social class or any other metric.

Because it is so easy to search an Adobe document I couldn’t resist seeing the number of references to the two age groups that are used to distinguish ‘young’ and ‘old’ - the 65+ get 13 references the youngesters nearly three times as many (37). I know it is not a competition but it does say something about the advertising industry's mindset.

I think the report says more about the way the advertising industry perceives the market than it does about the market itself. Dick Stroud