JICIMS Looks For Research Proposals For Online Planning Currency
JICIMS, the Joint Industry Committee for Internet Measurement Systems, has issued a request for proposals to media research companies, as the process to create an online planning currency continues.
The RFP document is endorsed by the four JICIMS shareholders – the UK AOP, the IAB, IPA, and ISBA. Since its establishment last year, the body has been dedicated to the creation of an audience research system that will provide the basis for a planning currency for the internet.
The RFP does include a set of minimum requirements. An online planning currency will have a user-centric approach, and will be primarily concerned with pre-campaign planning.
Data will be made available continuously and frequently. The main output will be audiences and audience profiles for a significant number of online media, and will provide the means to estimate net audiences across a number of sites. But the RFP will not be highly prescriptive, so JICIMS anticipates a range of proposals and approaches from research organisations submitting.
The body expects to receive these proposals by mid-May. After due deliberation, JICIMS will issue a formal invitation to tender later in the year, with a view to awarding a formal JICIMS contract by the end of 2008.
Bob Wootton, director of media and advertising at ISBA said: “This is a next and welcome step along a rigorous path towards an industry-agreed user-centric online audience measurement, whose outputs will finally enable the many brand advertisers who have yet to invest significantly in online to consider the medium on equal terms with the other, more established, media channels. We look forward to continued collaboration with media owners and agencies towards this exciting and, in our view, necessary goal”.
At MediaTel Group’s recent ‘Future of Online’ seminar, it was suggested that agencies are not demanding an online currency, and cost could prove a significant barrier to the development of one.
Richard Firminger, the outgoing regional sales director, northern Europe, at Yahoo!, who was speaking on the panel, said: “The agencies should speak up [if they do want an online currency] because I don’t hear it.”
He continued: “It [would] help our industry grow up and compare apples with apples. Though those business that are expected to fund it I think are going to find it difficult, and I think the agencies need to decide whether they are prepared to fund it through a licence.”
Speaking from the floor, Chris Boyd, the chief executive of the ABC, said: “[Richard Firminger] mentioned that buyers aren’t demanding [an online currency] at the moment and that’s absolutely true. Until the buyers demand a currency, you won’t see one.”
However, Sheryl Norman, digital director, UK, at Omnicom Media Group, said that a currency would be a positive development for agencies. “From the agency side, one standardised tool that is going to help us sell online better is a good thing at a very fundamental level,” she stressed.
Louise Ainsworth, MD EMEA at Nielsen Online, said there was an argument for having an online currency and it is to do with helping online grow with the advertisers and creating a standard definition within the marketplace (see No Huge Demand From Agencies For An Online Currency).
In January, Jim Marshall, chairman of Starcom, wrote in the IPA’s newsletter than a single, industry-endorsed audience research system for online is ‘critically important’.
He said that a measurement system, achieved through the IAB, would “enable advertisers to use the internet with a far greater degree of confidence in what it will deliver beyond its transactional capabilities (see Marshall Highlights Planning Currency For Online As Key Factor For 2008).”
IPA: 020 7235 7020 www.ipa.co.uk IAB: 020 8683 955 www.iabuk.net