Nielsen’s online campaign ratings due in UK later this year
Nielsen executives began a series of industry briefings on their new Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) service last week. Online Campaign Ratings is a new measurement system that provides GRPs for online advertising campaigns, enabling consistent cross-platform reach and frequency metrics for the first time.
The product has been running in the US since last August and John Burbank, president of Strategic Initiatives for Nielsen, and a key player in OCR development, was in London to report on progress to date and future developments.
The implications of the data available via the service were perhaps the most striking aspect. OCR will enable overnight reporting of online campaigns with media standard reach, frequency and GRP metrics. The service promises to both highlight wastage and prove delivery for buyers and sellers. A sample report shown at the briefing was a campaign targeting 18-34 women, which reached an audience that was 51% male. If targeting is improved as a result of OCR, what will be the market impact? In short – better value and higher yields if you are a publisher perhaps; or market inflation if you look at it from an agency perspective, where campaigns are being run more and more by systems, inevitably buying bulk and cheap.
Using OCR publishers can demand a higher CPM, as well as compete with other premium sites, since the availability of more accurate demographics will allow them to prove how they are delivering against clients’ targets. For advertisers and agencies, optimisation is key, and overnight reporting allows for in-flight optimisation, enabling significant potential savings by shifting media allocation to sites with a higher on-target delivery. However, agencies have invested heavily in their own DSPs, so Nielsen may face a tougher job convincing them to use this.
OCR’s USP is a tie-up between Nielsen and third party publisher data – the first of which is Facebook, which gives Nielsen anonymous, aggregated demographic data on a daily basis. Essentially the advertisement or the publisher carries a Nielsen tag, which “pings” Nielsen who count impressions. But this also “pings” Facebook (without sending the advertiser/publisher info). Facebook is sent a code, which can be related in real time to registered user. At the end of each day Facebook sends Nielsen a file with a distribution of demographics for each “ping”. But there is no individual data, so the transfer method protects individual consumer privacy.
Burbank said the Nielsen deal with Facebook was “a long term strategic partnership”, and that Facebook was doing this because it “helps the web… they would rather see a shift to more demographic targeting”.
Nielsen does expect to work with other big players too, with additional publishers said to be in the pipeline, and one announcement likely very soon.
The method goes a step further too. On average, 42% of all impressions in the US can be matched to a Facebook ID, which allows OCR a new degree of accuracy over panel-only approaches. Nielsen’s panels project the remaining sample. As people only have one Facebook ID this also gets over the ‘work v home v third device’ problem that besets much of online counting.
Burbank said it was not perfect yet, but felt it was a step change in accuracy as a source of online measurement. The daily campaign report includes reach and frequency and GRPs.
Burbank anticipates that buyers will soon be buying TV and web GRPs together around video, and that Nielsen could model cross-media reach and frequency and build in purchasing data too. Nielsen is currently working on a cross media version that will provide combined TV and online campaign delivery.
OCR has also managed to gain MRC (The Media Rating Council) accreditation in the States, rare for an online survey.