‘Online measurements will fail to galvanise industry’
The sales boss of online advertising network Adconion has warned that the interests of smaller players may not be taken care of in the creation of new audit standards for online.
Pete Davies, national sales director for Adconion, warns that because the process is being led by the Internet Advertising Bureau, which represents the larger players, others could be left out in the cold. He says:
“I worry that it will not galvanise the industry as hoped. Unfortunately because the system is being assessed and decided by the IAB, the new system might potentially fail to address many sites and audiences that do not fail into the top 100 or so most visited sites in Australia.”
He adds: “Because of this, networks, agencies and advertisers will need to continue to use and recognise other audience measurement systems to find their audiences and sites that are relevant for many of their campaigns.”
Pete raises a vald point and concerns that I know are shared, and have been expressed by, many in the industry. Here are my comments –
To identify the audience measurement needs of the industry, the IAB commissioned a blueprint in August 2007 which was contributed to by 21 representatives of publishers, agencies, advertisers,networks,and industry bodies including the MFA and the AANA.
In June of this year, we formed the IAB Measurement Council to set the agenda for audience measurement reform, review the responses to the blueprint, and carry out the first independant audit of Nielsen Online’s panel methodology.
The Council members are the specialist heads of audience measurement for the IAB founding members, and also Dave Mallum from COGS Media, who represented the interests of the so called “long tail” of publishers and ad networks.
So the interests of these networks and publishers have been represented at every step of the process. Whilst it is a challenge to come up with solutions that satisfy all players in this highly competitive industry of ours, in the case of audience measurement, you can have anything you want, at a price!!
One of the major challenges facing the Council early in 2009 is to recommend to the IAB Board the optimal composition of panel and tagging methodologies based on the cost/benefit of the recommendations of the independant auditor, and the commercial realities of including as many sites as possible.
All that said, Dave Mallam has recently left COGS Media so there is a place to fill on the IAB Measurement Council!
Any suggestions/applications will be welcomed and reviewed to ensure we maintain the broadest representation possible as we progress Australia’s online audience measurement to the launch of the world’s first hybrid measurement system in June 2009, and beyond!
I recklessly omitted in my reply to Pete Davies’ post that John Grono, representing the MFA and it’s members,also sits on the IAB Measurement Council.