What do advertisers want for Christmas? The end of autorefresh, and transparency
The Australian Association of National Advertisers has set out its wishlist for 2011. Top of the agenda is an end to autorefresh.
The list:
Wish #1: An end to auto-refresh in online advertising
Australia is among the last developed countries to abandon the practice of artificially inflating online audience numbers by treating each “refresh” of computer screens as an additional viewer. This practice is skewing the audience data and presenting a distorted and potentially misleading picture of online penetration.
Wow auto refresh number 1. 18 months ago ppl told me it was irrelevant. Funny.
So they want perfect systems for everything? Coming from someone in analytics in a major media provider, I’ve got to say we’d love to. However, in some cases the technology doesn’t exist, exists but is misleading as to what it provides, or is so expensive to carry out that media cost would go through the roof.
Personally I think the focus on auto-refresh is nothing more than a tool for agencies to attempt to negotiate lower rates, be it at a cpm or volume basis.
Take agenices out of the picture.
“inflating online audience numbers by treating each “refresh” of computer screens as an additional viewer”
Surely both Nielsen and comScore are only counting these as page impressions rather than new ‘viewers’.
In actual fact, Nielsen report on ‘browsers’ where comScore report on ‘viewers’.
JD’s Wishlist – Wish # 1
For the Australian Association of National Advertisers to understand online enough to comment intelligibly?
BD – Auto-refresh allows publishers to generate additional page impressions, not unique viewers or browsers. By keeping Auto-refresh publishers are trying to show more banners to each viewer. This is currently contributing to a slow devaluation of their users (and eCPM) as they flood them with banners.
Cheers,
JD
Efforts in compiling the list are evident.
I totally agree to point no.
1. Putting an end to auto refresh: Why to inflate the data of online audience just for the sake of benefit of a few?
and
6. A crystal clear picture of the remuneration of the agency: Why hide things just to create confusion?
@JD – I don’t know about that. Most publishers of a significant inventory level have a surplus of inventory that isn’t effectively monetised. You can fill it with low hanging performance campaigns or you can turn it into network activity I suppose, Or the solution might be to go down the less is more path.
Theoretically agencies should be willing to pay more for pages that don’t auto-refresh, as opposed to saying we will refuse to pay for advertising we have deemed less effective (without any evidence i see of value). How much of a % difference do you think it really equates to? It would be a different approach to things if agencies did something like increase the rate they will pay based on how much of an issue it is “perceived” to be, you might see the market shift. Why should a publisher change?
I’m a big fan of less is more. But if I was a publisher and I was going to look at adjusting then agencies need to get serious about the metrics that actually matter.