The Interactive Advertising Bureau has issued an Audience Measurement Landscape and Positioning Paper which outlines the key areas for online measurement.
Viewability, campaign measurement and page impression retirements are just some of the areas the IAB will discuss.
IAB also has its Town Hall meeting tomorrow.
Check out the full release below.
"IAB Australia issues positioning paper in advance of industry’s Measurement Town Hall meeting
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. You can read the Positioning Paper here.
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."
