• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 23, 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact consumer attitudes and behaviors related to advertising, marketing and media, leading industry researchers are developing new media-planning insights to help advertisers and agencies understand and target them better.

That was the case earlier this week, when U.S. media-planning researcher MRI-Simmons unveiled new post-pandemic consumer planning segments -- “nervous” vs. “accepting” -- and it is also happening at global media researcher Kantar.

During a webinar late Wednesday, Kantar Media Chairman and CEO Andy Brown unveiled how it has begun re-contacting panelists in its massive TGI (Target Group Index) panel to glean explicit insights about how the pandemic is altering their attitudes and behaviors.

Like MRI-Simmons’ U.S. panels, Kantar’s TGI panel is a “single-source” database measuring both media and product usage, as well as attitudes and lifestyles of consumers, but in a variety of overseas markets. In the U.K., for example, Kantar’s TGI panel has 24,000 respondents, and is a primary source for making media planning decisions in the U.K. marketplace.

Brown said Kantar began recontacting respondents to its 2019 U.K. panel this month to ask them explicit questions related to COVID-19, as well as their post-lockdown lifestyles, to understand how it is impacting their media usage.

While the findings are not surprising vs. an ample body of consumer tracking studies and audience measurement data conducted over the past couple of months, the TGI contacts have the rigor to be utilized as part of explicit media-planning products.

In one example shown by Brown, Kantar segmented its TGI panelists based on those who agreed with the statement: “In the past few weeks, I’m watching more online video and TV on demand (e.g. YouTube, iPlayer, Netflix,” and the responses equaled 20% of its adult base."

Not surprisingly, the findings reveal that British consumers are struggling to balance their work, family and social lives, but it also shows they index high in terms of being influenced by advertising, especially TV advertising.

“In practical terms, this can actually be used on media plans,” Brown said, noting, “You can go down to granular levels on almost any question.”