Online Measurement Roundtable brings 29 industry representatives together

The first steps towards the industry’s stated commitment to bring clarity to online measurement in the Australian market have been taken, with 29 industry stakeholders representing 17 organisations attending a roundtable facilitated by IAB Australia to
discuss the issues.

The meeting, which was held 31st May and facilitated by Gai Le Roy, had a core goal of developing a clear and concise definition of the market’s needs and a definition of the areas of consensus and areas of divergence.

According to Patty Keegan, General Manager of IAB Australia, the meeting was successful and a general consensus was reached.

“It’s clear that a new or enhanced measurement system is needed to provide accurate, transparent and consistent audience metrics as they relate to planning and buying online media for the local market. The stakeholders agreed that research vendors should be challenged to come up with innovative solutions to circumvent existing technological and financial restraints,” said Ms Keegan.

A working party has been established with representatives from a range of stakeholders including publishers and agencies, including IAB Australia, the MFA and AANA. This group will assume collective responsibility for refining a blueprint outlining
the requirements the industry stakeholders would ultimately like a planning and buying measurement solution to include. Once the blueprint is completed and agreed to by stakeholders, this committee will welcome responses from interested research vendors.

Feedback from the roundtable included a wish list of inclusions for an audience measurement system:

- A consistent measure for planning and buying is required, though this may be supplemented by different measurement systems from publishers
- The ability to measure actual people is fundamental to the success of any new measurement system
- The focus will be upon domestic people visiting both domestic and overseas sites
- Site centric, panel data or a combination of the two may be used as long as it is able to meet the objective of measuring the behaviour of people.
- The ultimate system should not require participation from individual publishers for measurement, but should be broad enough to provide a realistic view of the whole marketplace.
- Minimum essential metrics include page impressions, people, reach, time and frequency.
- Ideally data should be available ‘next day’ and cover a range of different time periods.

Ends

About the Interactive Advertising Bureau
IAB Australia officially launched in October 2005 with Australia’s six major online publishers - Fairfax Digital, Google, News Digital Media, ninemsn, Sensis, and Yahoo!7 - together with the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) as its founding members. The IAB now has an additional 36 member companies, drawn from a broad spectrum of online
advertising and marketing organizations, technology and services companies. The group has three key priorities: to promote the standardisation of ad formats; to ensure timeliness and transparency of industry data, and to educate the marketplace about the value of online advertising.

For further information about IAB Australia please visit: www.iabaustralia.com.au

For more editorial information please contact:
Pru Quinlan; Einsteinz Communications
T: (02) 8905 0995 or pru@einsteinz.com.au