I-COM worldmeasurementnews

In UK, UKOM moves towards a planning currency for online

London, Wednesday, 25 February 2009: Peter Bowman, general manager of UKOM, outlines the importance of an industry accepted planning system for online media. I believe we're on the way to providing what the online industry declared that it wanted at a milestone summit last autumn - an industry accepted planning system for online media.

With the IAB and AOP at the helm, UKOM is the authoritative voice for UK online audience measurement, run in response to the needs of advertisers, media agencies and online media owners. Established to drive progress in audience measurement the objective of UKOM is to create, administer and fund an industry agreed system for planning advertising campaigns using online media in Britain. At the end of February, this site will be replaced with www.ukom.uk.net, and all key stakeholders will be made aware of this relaunch

Next steps:
We were very encouraged by last year’s ‘Request for Proposals’ (RFP) process, so we are returning to those research companies who submitted usable proposals and it is our goal to seek a formal partnership with one of them. This partner is likely to be the company who can most closely match the original JICIMS specification within the available, reduced, funding. We believe that UKOM does not need to own the data, but we plan to fund necessary improvements so as to match JICIMS standards. More...

The Kantar Group to streamline client offering following TNS deal

23 February, 2009 London — The Kantar Group has today announced a major re-organisation to strengthen its position as the world’s leading information, insight and consultancy business and streamline its offer for clients. The re-organisation will simplify the Group’s overall offering through a series of structural changes, building on the acquisition of TNS in October 2008.

Commenting on the changes, Eric Salama, CEO of The Kantar Group, said: “This re-organisation is far-reaching and is all about clients. It’s about how we help clients access the best talents and capabilities we have, when and where they need it. And it’s about a structure which enables us to innovate and roll out offers which are relevant to contemporary client needs. We are keeping a multi-brand structure which encourages the development of best-in-class specialists while dealing with a key client demand to see offers which are more joined-up. We will know that we will have been successful when we see clients getting the best of Kantar everyday, everywhere.”

Kantar Media brings together the specialist media capabilities of TNS Media Intelligence, TNS Media Research, KMR and TGI. The business will be organised into four key operations: Kantar Media Intelligence, Kantar Audience Measurement (formerly Media Research), TGI Global (including other single source services) and an integrated company covering all disciplines in the US market. The identity for the new company will be Kantar Media, but it will reference TNS in its branding in acknowledgment of the strength of the TNS brand in the media world. The enlarged unit will have a leading worldwide position in areas such as audience measurement, advertising expenditure tracking, software and news monitoring. It will also be the home for the increased focus on behavioural data from new technologies, return path data and mobile and for developing the infrastructure for addressable advertising. More...

In US, SQAD, Forecasting Source for TV, Throws Weight Behind CPM Standard

In US, SQAD is recognized as the industry standard media cost forecasting source for national TV (NetCosts - network TV, cable and syndication), spot TV, Hispanic spot TV, spot radio and the Internet. SQAD provides reliable media data to advertising agencies, buying services, advertisers, television and radio stations, cable operators, program syndicators and Internet publishers.

Marketing Vox writes: Media marketplace data source SQAD has announced plans to use the cost-per-thousand (CPM) method as the primary currency for tracking online advertising. The move comes as Madison Avenue attempts to standardize buying metrics for television — and will likely contribute to the alignment of online ad ROI with traditional media, including television, reports MediaPost. "Since there is currently no industry-standard equivalent to cost-per-point in the Web display space, we elected to focus on CPM in the initial WebCosts release," stated CEO Neil Klar of SQAD. Klar said the decision was made after discussions with the Media Policy Committee of the American Association of Advertising (AAAA). More...

IAB Canada Releases Results Of First-Ever Canadian Mobile Advertising Revenue Survey

TORONTO, February 24, 2009 - The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada today announced that Mobile Advertising Revenue in Canada grew from $1.1 million in 2006 to $2.7 million in 2007, and is expected to almost double again in 2008 to $5.2 million.

Standard SMS advertising programs currently generate 75% of the total Canadian Mobile advertising revenue, with the remainder divided across Premium SMS, Mobile Content, Mobile (Display) Advertising, Mobile Search and Mobile Applications. All forms of Mobile advertising are growing rapidly year-over-year, with the exception of Mobile Search, which is virtually non-existent at this time. More...

IAB US Issues Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines; Standardizes Key Industry Metrics

ORLANDO, FLORIDA (February 23, 2009) –The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced the release of the final version of its Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines at its Annual Leadership Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back, in Orlando, Florida. These guidelines provide clear, consistent definitions of key metrics and create a single standard for measuring Web audience sizes. The guidelines are the result of a major industry-wide initiative led by the IAB and included the participation of publishers, agencies and auditing organizations.

These new guidelines:
- Define key industry metrics such as unique users, unique cookies, unique browsers, visits and time spent.
- Establish a framework for all measurement providers to have their methodologies audited, providing greater certainty for the industry.
- Foster greater accuracy and reliability of all forms of online audience measurement, whether based on server data, online panels or user registration.
More...

Testing, Testing, Can You Hear Me?

Jodi McDermott writes for Mediapost: If you're in an organization with an online presence, the topic of AB and multivariate testing is bound to come up in conversation at some point. Getting a testing program off the ground is not as difficult as it sounds if you take it one step at a time (literally). Here are a few recommendations for getting your testing program up and running. More...

New Metrics For Success In Video Marketing

Tyler Willis, Director of Marketing for Involver, a company that distributes, tracks and optimizes video campaigns on social networks, writes for Mediapost: Recently, there has been a greater push to define video engagement metrics in a more concrete manner. In order to compare and contrast the ROI of different video-based and non-video-based marketing tactics, the industry needs a new and better definition for video engagement, sensitive to the new ways in which people behave and interact online. This definition can be used to set the expectations of what one can expect from any video marketing effort. We can't use old definitions to flesh out new engagement metrics. More...

Social Media Monitoring And Measurement

Srishti Gupta, Insights & Analytics Director at Beyond Interaction writes for Mediapost: Another application of such monitoring is to get feedback on a particular aspect of your product or brand, answering questions like: What do consumers think of my ad? Do they think my product is too expensive?

Since the objective is much narrower, you can expect to get more actionable results out of this exercise. These can be especially useful for creative and messaging changes. The caveat to this is how buzzworthy or talked about the specific product attribute is. There should be enough activity out there to guide future decision-making. More...

comScore: Cookies Still Food for Thought for Online Advertisers in Europe

Jamie Gavin writes: Frank Harrison, Strategic Resources Director at Zenith Optimedia Worldwide, flagged the overstatement of unique visitors based on site-centric data as one of the key challenges facing the industry.

“The cookie deletion issue is big and growing and there is a real need for transparency and clarity regarding it,” said Harrison. “If cookie deletion does indeed mean that reach is overstated by up to 2.5 times, there is an equivalent understatement of online ad frequency, and that needs to be addressed. Advertisers need to know what they are getting for their money online.” More...

Influence: Looking to make another quantitative leap

Todd Parsons writes: Influence is a fairly nebulous term – Phil Sheldrake’s Influence Scorecard is a great step towards making it less so. By using Phil's variation of Kaplans
Balanced Scorecard, there's opportunity to connect organizational performance
indicators to measures of influence, which, looked at independently, can be
confusing or misleading.

As marketers, we need to start looking more holistically at the Web to see how
all online media is becoming socially connected. Understanding the intent
and nature of social connections across both UGC and "traditional" content is
one factor to exposing it’s influence. More...