How we do it
Overview:
There are two key constituents that make up the IPA TouchPoints Databases:
- The Hub Survey — a unique and original survey of 5,000+ adults, producing information gathered through individuals' e.Diaries and self-completion questionnaires;
- The TouchPoints Channel Planner- the second stage uses this Hub Survey as a base onto which all the industry currencies are incorporated to produce the first industry available channel planning tool.
The Hub Survey is based on a representative sample of 5,000 adults aged 15+, living in Great Britain.
Each respondent is asked to:
(i) keep an e.Diary, filling in their activities on a half hourly basis over a seven day period.
and
(ii) self-completion paper questionnaire covering attitudes, product ownership, shopping and media behaviour
Data collection periods:
IPA TouchPoints3: September 2009 - February 2010
IPA TouchPoints2: September 2007 — February 2008
IPA TouchPoints1: April — November 2005
Sample source:
IPA TouchPoints3: NRS Recontact Sample
IPA TouchPoints2: RDD &TNS Access Panels
IPA TouchPoints1: TNS Access Panels
Recruitment:
Telephone Recruitment with postal placement and return
Respondent Incentive:
£20 - £25
£2,500 prize draw
Research Contractors: 2009/10
Ipsos Media CT (Hub Survey)
RSMB (Integration)
The e.Diary records information:
By half hour:
Where were you?
Who were you with?
What were you doing? If travelling, mode of travel and reasons for travel.
Media consumption
What mood were you in?
Were you alert or relaxed?
At the end of the day:
Cinema going
Advertising mail
Telemarketing calls received
Commercial text messages received
e-mail messages received
The self completion questionnaire 
asks respondents for their attitudes and habits in the following areas:
Television
Radio
Press
Outdoor
Cinema
Online
SMS text and picture messaging
Event and broadcast sponsorship (selected events)
Direct Marketing
Word of Mouth
Technology Ownership
Lifestyles
Attitudes
Shopping
Travel
The TouchPoints Channel Planner
The expansion of the TouchPoints Hub and creation of the TouchPoints Channel Planner is conducted by RSMB, and happens across two stages. The first stage of the process was to expand the Hub survey onto the BARB Establishment Survey. This effectively creates an average of nine clones for every TouchPoints Hub Survey respondent, delivering an operational sample size of approximately 50,000. Whilst not increasing the effective sample size, the expansion allows all industry media currency respondents to be used in the integration process. This technique substantially strengthens the match of media research currencies to TouchPoints. Stage two involves ‘fusing’ media currency data onto the expanded 50,000 TouchPoints database. A series of hooks across the media had been pre-defined within the self-completion and e.diary, these included demographic and household composition descriptors but crucially also the media patterns of consumption. The combinations of these hooks allowed TouchPoints respondents to ‘receive’ media currency data from the most relevant currency respondents. See also Ken Baker's TouchPoints Integration Methodology Appraisal
In the case of media for which there are no industry-approved trading currencies such as the internet, SMS text and direct mail, contact probabilities from within TouchPoints have been created to enable them to be included in multi-media schedules.
To enable you to get maximum value from the Channel Planner, you will need the specialist analysis software provided by companies such as IMS,KMR and Telmar who have been key partners throughout this initiative. These user- friendly systems enable users to create combined coverage and frequency across the channels out of the personal contact probabilities created in the integration process and the cross-media coverage inter-relationships which were carried across from the hub. In combination, this data allows ‘currency level’ coverage and frequencies for individual and combined media channels to be calculated for the user defined target markets. Users are able to input planning criteria according to a medium’s own conventions but outputting as common measurements showing total GRPs, coverage and frequency.