The current system for buying and measuring online advertising and media is insufficient and page impressions look set to be phased out as a lead metric according to a new white paper from the IAB.
The IAB outlined counting impressions, campaign ratings and viewability as its priorities ahead of an all-industry meeting later this week to address developing an industry standard that offers accurate measurement across channels and platforms.
The IAB believes that the current metrics and systems are not good enough for companies to base investment decisions on.
It wants to find a way to bring together the disparate data sets advertisers and publishers rely on to create a more sophisticated online measurement system that offers greater accuracy, credibility, confidence and investment in digital advertising.
The IAB has issued its Audience Measurement Landscape and Positioning Paper today, ahead of a a 'town hall' meeting on Wednesday (19 March) where the IAB will bring together agencies, marketers and publishers to discuss priorities and issues around online audience measurement.
The meeting is the first step in the IAB's eight-month review of how online advertising is measured. The deed is currently held by Nielsen.
It will focus on how to develop a metric that goes beyond the desktop and brings in mobile, tablet and other devices to accurately see who has seen ads across platforms. The IAB believes that the approach to measurement should be the same across all channels and content types, although the technical solutions may differ.
Audience verification is another area of focus. The IAB supports enhanced metrics that use demographic audience profiling for digital campaigns but says current services in market for are not robust enough to be used in trading negotiations. It plans to publish updated guidelines on this in April.
Alice Manners, CEO of IAB Australia, said: “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.”
Read the full whitepaper here.
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