The row over the La Elfa readership study in Germany has been resolved, with the Hamburg court ruling the research is legal on 22nd November. To be exact, the judge said that the survey fulfilled “the fundamental requirements of neutrality, objectivity and expertise”. The results can again be accessed at the La Elfa website.
What does this mean? Well probably not a huge amount! The survey is useful for media planning, but – like any other readership survey – can’t give the whole picture. Weka obviously feels vindicated, and the other publishers will be disappointed, but at the end of the day media planning cannot be done on the back of one limited survey. To use a very English phrase, this has been a storm in a teacup.