Lorraine Hadfield (pictured), who was been appointed president of the audience measurement division of Ipsos OTX MediaCT earlier this month, told Research that no specific plans had yet been made for the division’s activities.

Hadfield said her main short-term priority would be her other responsibility overseeing the Ipsos Mendelsohn business, which tracks the habits of consumers who earn more than $100,000 a year. Here, there are opportunities to combine Mendelsohn’s knowledge with audience data – including data from third parties – to build up a picture of what affluent consumers watch and buy.

“I think it has a lot of legs”, said Hadfield. “We see Mendelsohn as a pre-eminent leader in understanding affluent consumers in the US.”

Hadfield said that she views the Ipsos Mendelsohn business as “a fusion hub for currency multimedia ratings… that will help us provide a deeper dive on cross-media campaigns” when its data is merged with information from other sources.

For instance, the firm has an agreement in place with Nielsen where ratings from its National People Meter TV panel are integrated with data from Mendelsohn’s 14,000 strong panel.

“We’re actively seeking to work with other companies who provide currency measurement,” Hadfield explained, “It’s a very compelling proposition for the [media] agencies, who can say, ‘This is my upscale planning tool of choice.’”

In her previous role at Nielsen, Hadfield ran the firm’s US radio measurement service, where diaries were used to count listeners in 51 small-to-medium sized markets, until the service was axed last year. Hadfield said it was too early to say whether Ipsos would consider launching a similar service.