NewsLine Column: Setting The Global Standard
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With the first global online ad impression measurement guidelines now in place, IAB Chief Executive Danny Meadows-Klue explains why creating a single standard in counting is the key to growing the medium…
The online industry is a treasure-chest for marketers with a glittering array of tools, services and products that have transformed the way companies sell their wares. Unfortunately, like all young industries, along side the treasure chest the Aladin’s cave also holds the occasional Pandora’s box. Counting practices were one of these areas, and getting a common standard in place has been no fairytale.
The IAB has worked for two years behind the scenes to lead a group of trade associations, technologists and vendors to examine the different ways counting could take place and seek a solution which can be adopted as best practice by all. The worldwide agreement of all major ad delivery companies to migrate towards this single process is a major leap forward and marks a turning point in the data the industry provides its advertisers.
This is only one part of the equation towards having perfect reporting, but in a medium already more accountable in the delivery of its messages than any other in the history of marketing, it’s testimony to the passion the online sector has that executives are still pushing for even greater accuracy.
One of the missions of the IAB is to make online even easier for marketers to use and standardising our approach to counting the delivery of each and every advert creates a truly global consistency for the first time. This initiative marks the first time any medium has launched a global measurement standard that has been accepted by all the key industry stakeholder organisations. The guidelines have the support of almost all major online publishers and the majority of major online advertising server technologies worldwide
The guidelines solve one of the key challenges for interactive marketers, agencies, ad-servers and publishers by establishing a clear definition of an online advertising impression in the context of ad-serving technology. There’s always been a frustration that in the quest for accuracy, the campaign reporting numbers did not always tie up with those in the original media plan. Just as in the early days of radio specialist technology was needed to fix this, and by getting everyone to agree to count the same way, there has been a real breakthrough. They greatly reduce discrepancies between ad-impression counts from publisher servers and third-party ad-servers.
“In just 10 short years we rocketed forward by offering marketers a whole new experience for measuring ad campaigns. This initiative improves on that opportunity by delivering not just a uniform measurement standard, but one that travels across borders,” said Greg Stuart, President and CEO of the US IAB.
For the geeks among us, we’re changing to client-side counting and full disclosure of counting methodology, standardizing cache-busting and standardizing the robots and spiders exclusion list. This means that we’ll all be counting exactly the same thing and although the discrepancies may be tiny, they’ve caused concern among many of us for some time. In some markets we’re even launching process-based, periodic certification to prove companies really are complying.
Having the ad counting guidelines in place builds on the existing industry standards. It still means there’s a key role for the audience panels and the auditing bodies who verify the page traffic data websites have and ABC Electronic Managing Director Richard Foan played a key role in building the standards. “We are all working towards a common goal of increasing online advertising spend through demonstrating accountability and raising confidence in the credibility of the medium,” he said.
Copies of the guidelines are available from [email protected]
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