• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, July 13, 2011

Glenn Enoch, VP of Integrated Media Research for ESPN Research+Analytics, is arguably one of the leading researchers in cross-platform research. Glenn's uses data from both single-source and fused datasets to derive insight on usage of TV, Internet, Mobile devices, Audio and Print. In my interview with him, Glenn discusses ESPN's cross-platform initiatives including his recently published Seven Principles of Cross-Platform Measurement, his views on Tablet research, some surprising research results and ESPN as a company poised for the future. 

View the complete videos of the interview here.

Below is a short excerpt: 

CW: Glenn, have you done any research on the tablet that you can talk about?

GE: Yes we have, although I would say that it is nascent research. Part of the problem with doing research on this is that there are so few people that have a tablet - we have heard various estimates like one in twenty is the high water mark on the estimate. And I think what happens with these new technologies is that people become really, really interested in it because they themselves have a tablet.

If you go back to DVR research, when TiVo first came out, if you asked the average person on the street they might not know what it was -- but if you went to an industry conference, there would be an enormous show of hands from the audience who had a TiVo. I think that especially at ad agencies, they thought, "If everyone watches TV like I am, then I am out of a job." So it becomes this disproportionate influence on behavior. Research is hard to do because the penetration is very small and the incidence level is really, really low and it is very nascent behavior. So we are still figuring out what the tablet means. 

CW: Glenn, I hear that you are the creator of the Seven Principles of Cross-Platform Research. Can you tell us about that?

GE: Sure. When we started to work on cross-platform research, we redoubled our efforts about three or four years ago. We had a variety of datasets that we were looking at, such as the Nielsen convergence panel and we had some Knowledge Networks data.

Originally when we were presenting our findings, we said, "Well here is what this provider shows and here is what that provider shows" and it was a little tiresome both for us as well as for our clients. What we began to notice was that there were things that seemed to be true across these different data providers and we summarized this into our seven principles. They form the intellectual underpinning of our cross platform research, certainly on the audience side, and we have published them in the Journal of Advertising Research in June 2010. 

Basically the seven principles are:

1. New media create new strata of users so that something new like the iPad will be adopted by some of the people -- not everybody -- and their usage will be in combination with some of the things they already have.  

2. There are no new metrics necessary for cross platform research. In fact we need things that combine the media.

3. You need to separate users from usage.

4. The heavy users from one platform tend to be the heavy users of another platform.  

5. Cross-platform use is not zero-sum so that doing one thing more does not necessarily mean doing one thing less.

6. Simultaneous is a widespread behavior but it is limited in time.  

7. People choose the best available platform based on where they are and what they are trying to do.