MRG Evening Meeting: Website Auditing
The pressing question of how (and why) to audit websites was addressed at the MRG meeting last night by Richard Foan from ABC //electronic and Mike Reed from BPA International. Both non-profit-making companies are using their history and knowledge of auditing print media in developing what they hope will be a ‘common currency’ for the auditing of ‘traffic’ on internet publications.
Foan is quick to acknowledge that there are a number of question marks surrounding the standards and accuracy of auditing techniques, but insists that the only way of addressing the problem, and improving the accuracy of results, is to rely on an “independent, impartial review.”
The seemingly exponential growth in new media publishing, and the accompanying reliance on advertising for revenue, creates a necessity for publishers to guarantee, and prove, the delivery of an audience to an advert. BPA is currently using a number of analyses to produce as accurate a figure as possible of the amount of traffic using a company’s website. However, despite the fact that the medium is completely electronic (or maybe because of it), it is proving very difficult to ensure accuracy.
Mike Reed of BPA agreed there should be a ‘commonality of approach’ although the BPA, ABC //electronic and Internet Profiles Corporation are all essentially working independently. Both Foan and Reed agree that the value in third-party auditing is to be found in assessing whether the activity (usage) recorded is legitimate (i.e. not tampered with) and in providing a human evaluation to what would otherwise be an automated analysis.
The BPA measurement techniques have to take into account a number of factors which can dramatically alter the audit figures, and then adjust the final count accordingly (i.e. ensuring legitimacy). For example, the log files which record accesses to a site can be altered to either contain more than one day’s activity or to hold a duplication of information thereby making the site appear to be more used than it actually is. The sheer size of these log files makes the detection of such alterations very difficult; auditors, claim Foan and Reed, can root out these additions and discount them in the audit figure.
Another problem with obtaining ‘relevant’ measurements is the presence of what are called ‘spiders’. Spiders are pieces of software which search the world wide web for any sites containing selected words or structures and are often used by people conducting research into websites. The activity of spiders accessing a site repeatedly (or even at all) should not be counted as readership and therefore needs to be discounted in the audit. Apparently auditors are able to remove commercial spiders but not necessarily private ones. Similarly, search engines such as Excite and Yahoo! will automatically access sites without a user necessarily reading them; this also needs to be discounted. Frames on pages (separate boxes holding different information) can also artificially boost the usage figure by being counted as separate pages. The auditors ensure that these frames are disclosed and their effect is accounted for.
Conversely, the use of more than one server (the system which relays information from the site across the Net) can lead to an underestimation of users as logs are not always taken from all servers. Audits can detect this and increase the circulation figures accordingly.
The nature of all these discrepancies means that a company’s statement of page impressions is not necessarily a sound basis on which to buy ad space; an independent audit, insist Foan and Reed, is the only way of having any accountability. The long and short of it, however, is that, if intent on doing so, web publishers can cheat the figures and they’ll probably get away with it. What Foan and Reed are saying is that auditing is virtually the only defence, albeit not a foolproof one.
Furthermore, website auditing of the type conducted by BPA and ABC //electronic only records each time a page is accessed. It does not, for instance, say how long it was held on the screen for or whether a banner advertisement was clicked on or even fully downloaded. Ad audit software such as NetGravity does keep track of the usage of banner ads allowing advertisers to see how many people are following their link and determine whether sales increase accordingly.
Richard Foan said he was keen to forge partnerships with ad auditors in order to create the common currency which is required. Reed, however, notes that they are cautious to collaborate. Pressure from advertisers, he believes, will increase their willingness to co-operate.
The MediaTel-hosted MRG website can be found at http://www.mrg.org.uk.