Three more digital publishers sign up for audit as anti auto-refresh pressure grows
A series of online publishers have added their weight to demands to restrict the use of auto-refresh to artificially boost page impressions, and signed up to have their sites audited.
And in an announcement today, the Audit Bureaux of Australia said that Austereo, Allure Media and Independent Digital Media are among the latest to sign up for ABA audits which demands that publisher-generated traffic – where a page automatically refreshes and a new ad is served too – are not included in the numbers.
The ABA warned:
“Publisher-generated traffic refers to any web traffic that is not generated by actual people visiting a website, such as when a publisher sets a web page to automatically reload every few minutes. This automated traffic does not represent activity from real people and therefore can severely inflate audience figures and waste advertiser’s money on unseen ads. Web pages can automatically refresh for hours or even days if a web browser is left open in the background.
Good to hear that Group M takes a preferential approach to audited sites. All IDM women’s sites are audited and have been awarded the green tick : Primped, The Knot, Younger You and Homehound.
Great news. Welcome to the ‘green tick club’ guys.
Good to see some publishers respond with action rather than words. Well Done!
Wonder if anyone will start offering a user rebate for manual refresh…..
Good. Totally shits me how Heraldsun.com.au and other fairfax websites auto refresh. I’m normally still cycling through articles when it refreshes , so annoying!
Excellent news. Congratulations to those jumping on board getting the ABA ‘green-tick’.
I must however relate one of my fave sayings about online … “it is certainly the most measured medium, but probably the least measurable medium”.
Interesting to see if this ‘preferential approach’ will actually happen or if it’s just lip service. At the end of the day, without that there’s no real incentive for a publisher to sign up to something that costs them money but doesn’t really provide any additional value over their competitors who don’t pay.