Many of the main advertising budgets target the "quality" consumer and the business decision makers. This group can represent 30-40% of the market value of products like cars, travel, electronics and household durables. It contains the audience of the international and national quality media that are being surveyed and is broad enough to represent the major part of quality products and services.

Synovate's reputation for multi-country research has been long established and is based on always using native speaking interviewers, calling from Amsterdam. Also, the project and field managers are multi-lingual to secure communications. Authorised translators take care of translations.

Their long standing connections with media researchers all over the world, as well as the combined expertise of the EMS working party, gives Synovate's project directors a unique insight into each country's media market. As more media owners and clients come in this will be extended further.

To ensure valid answers, all titles of print media and TV stations involved are read out individually to the respondent, grouped in a logical way, explaining the type of publications. Furthermore: during the fieldwork, possible mistakes can be traced and provided for, as is done for BBC Prime (which is NOT BBC to be confused with 1 or 2). Fifteen years of telephone media research for the National Readership Survey in the Netherlands has proved this to be a feasible and successful methodology. Typically the higher educated are less likely to be confused about what they read.

The possibility of interest declining during the interview must be taken into account in each type of survey. Within the CATI-procedure, the order in which the groups of media are presented to respondents is rotated fully, and within each group, the titles are presented in random order. Additionally, the overall sequence of print and TV questioning is rotated, to avoid any order effects.

The loss in response between the first and second part of the interview - caused by the mail-out methodology - might have an influence on the representativity of the survey. Synovate's experience in this type of surveys, as well as the analysis of the profiles so far, have shown only a very slight bias. Any bias arising can be identified immediately, because the full data from the telephone survey are available for comparison and -if necessary- reweighting. The media data resulting from both databases will be calibrated.

By boosting the interviews in the group of business decision makers sufficient sample sizes for analysis within this important target group are ensured. Planners can target their analysis on job title, providing robust sample sizes. Overall the percentage profile of business media will indeed be lower than in a universe of businessmen only. On the other hand: many more readers and viewers are picked up, describing a far larger portion of the audience of even the top-business publications and channels.

National surveys will always be the standard for national media planning. However, harmonised databases across borders are not available. International media are often excluded. The purpose of a multinational survey is to establish relative market sizes, which along with other data (competitive activity, distribution levels and media costs) can be used to aid the allocation of promotional budgets across countries and regions.