IAB Australia’s Measurement Council has today issued an Audience Measurement Landscape and Positioning Paper, outlining the key areas for online measurement ahead of its Town Hall meeting on Wednesday 19th March. The areas reflect the shift in focus for online measurement from purely environment concerns, towards content, program and campaign considerations.
According to Alice Manners, CEO of IAB Australia, viewability, campaign measurement and the potential retirement of page impressions are top of the list for discussion.
“We have worked hard over many years, along with other leading industry bodies, to identify and agree the industry recognised and accepted online audience measurement currency. Our intention in releasing this Positioning Paper is to outline the key issues and next steps which will assist us as an industry to continue to move forward on measurement and to create ongoing discussion.
“Ultimately we will have to make some significant strides toward achieving comparability, accountability and transparency with online metrics if we want to achieve true cross media measurement. We believe that the ongoing IAB Australia Tender process, supported by MFA and AANA will be an important part of being able to deliver on that aim,” said Manners.
Viewability and audience verification has been identified as an important step towards measuring which ads are seen by people, provide brand marketers campaign demographics, addressing the issue of incorrect attribution and assist in flushing out inventory that negatively impacts effectiveness metrics for digital media. The Whitepaper notes that at the moment there is no consistency or agreement within the market on viewability metrics and that a local test of vendor technology will take place once the results are available from the US IAB’s latest round of testing, to establish clear guidelines on the use of viewable metrics for standard and video display ad units in the Australian market.
The possibility of moving away from using page impressions or views as a lead metric in comparing environments is another key issue identified by the Measurement Council, after consultation with the MFA and agencies. The Whitepaper does not however that it may still be an input into any industry wide rating tool as well as a valid metric for internal analytics.
The Whitepaper also notes that while there may be different technical solutions for different devices, including desktop, mobile and tablet; or content types including video, the approach to measurement should be the same.
Campaign ratings or measurement is the final key area identified in the Whitepaper, with IAB Australia noting that it supports the availability of enhanced metrics for digital campaigns that are based on people metrics and demographic audience profiling, particularly for brand focused campaigns. It does however note that the current services in market are not robust enough for use in trading or trading negotiations and that they should only be used to gain insights for individual campaigns and help optimise planning decisions. The IAB Measurement Council will be releasing guidelines on usage of the existing audience verification services in April 2014.
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Editors Notes
This Report was prepared under the “New Approach” introduced in the June Qtr 2012 OAER. The data collected from industry participants has been supplemented by:
- Estimates for Google display, video, and mobile advertising as well as estimates for Facebook display and mobile advertising
- Refinement of prior methodology used for estimating Google search; and
- Historical mobile advertising data collected from industry participants from March Qtr 2011 combined with estimated Google mobile advertising, to provide a picture of the aggregated mobile advertising market and the growth trends.
Comparative data for the period from September Qtr 2010 has been restated to be consistent with the methodology changes. From time to time, estimated revenues are updated as new information and data sources become available. This may cause a series break in the data and should be taken into account when considering historical trends.
About the Interactive Advertising Bureau
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Limited is the peak trade association for online advertising in Australia and was incorporated in July 2010. As one of over 40 IAB offices globally, and with a rapidly growing membership, IAB Australia’s principal objective is to support and enable the media and marketing industry to ensure that they thrive in the digital economy.
IAB Australia’s board includes representatives of Carsales.com, Fairfax Media, Google, Mi9, Network Ten, News Australia, REA Group, Telstra Media Group, TressCox Lawyers and Yahoo!7. It has four objectives:
- To be the ‘big tent’ for the entire digital advertising industry and define the future of digital advertising
- To deliver the benefits of ad funded interactive experiences to Australians
- To develop, coordinate and promote industry standards and guidelines that make interactive advertising a simpler and more attractive medium for agencies, advertisers and marketers
- To prove and promote the effectiveness of interactive advertising to advertisers, agencies, marketers and the press
For further information about IAB Australia please visit: www.iabaustralia.com.au