Inaugural Award winner announced
The 2026 asi New Perspectives Award
Sponsored by 
We are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2026 asi New Perspectives Award is Magdalena Paczocha of Ipsos UK.
Introduced by asi at the International Conferences in Copenhagen last November and launched in March of this year, this Award aims to encourage and support young people relatively new to the industry. We wished to give them the opportunity to contribute to our conferences and to the wider discussions and decision-making within the audience measurement, research and insights space. We felt this is even more critical as accelerating change across the industry calls for fresh thinking from emerging talent and for new voices to help shape the future. Many in the industry have voiced their support for this initiative and we are grateful to Pure X Media for their sponsorship.
The response to this inaugural year exceeded our expectations – both in the number of submissions from around the world and of the quality of their thinking and originality. There is a lot of talent out there – so much so that a number of those who did not win the award will also be invited to join the winner in presenting their ideas to this year’s conference in November.
But there had to be one winner, and after much deliberation our panel of judges decided that the award should go this year to Magdalena Paczocha of Ipsos Media. She addressed a significant problem facing broadcasters currently – how to employ AI without it compromising relationships with audiences. People are using AI in their daily lives but still feel uneasy when they see it in the news or on the radio. They’re fine with AI doing invisible jobs – like organising a playlists or subtitling a video – but they get uncomfortable when AI starts telling stories, reporting news, or pretending to be a presenter. It is not a question of how to get audiences comfortable with AI but how to determine which human capabilities are non-negotiable, and build AI governance around ensuring those are maintained.
Congratulations Magdalena and we look forward to you presenting your work in Venice!
The 2026 asi International Radio & Audio and Television & Video Conferences will be held in Venice on 4th-6th November.