Online audience figures are set to become more transparent and accurate according to Australia's print audit body which is about to launch a web traffic service for its member publishers.
The Audit Bureaux of Australia, made up of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and Circulations Audit Board (CAB), has developed the Web Audit Service to ensure a standard of audience data collection is upheld by its member-sites.
The collaborative effort between industry bodies such as the ABA, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia, the Media Federation of Australia (MFA) and the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA), will be launched on the 1st May, with the first audited data being released on the 1st June. ABA members participating in the service will have their website traffic data compiled through Nielsen Online’s Market Intelligence tool.
The audited information will include daily unique browsers, monthly page impressions, total sessions, and page and session duration. For the first time publishers’ audited print and online data will be published alongside each other through the ABA’s eData portal. While audited Nielsen Online data will be identified by an ABC or CAB logo on the Market Intelligence service.
ABA chief ,Gordon Towell said the changes will increase the confidence of media buyers and advertisers. "Our involvement in the delivery of audited website traffic metrics is an important milestone providing an industry benchmark that will give advertisers and media buyers’ directly comparable data when making their marketing decisions," he said. “Interestingly, these are the same driving forces within the print media that created the original ABC back in 1932.”
The absence of industry standards governing publisher's traffic figures at present means numbers are prone to being inflated. Some of the problems with current tag and panel-based data include the duplication of "at home" and "at work" audience numbers not being accounted for, tags being deleted and small panel sizes resulting in many smaller sites going under the radar.
The measurement standards being spearheaded by the IAB Australia, which has already seen Nielsen Online's proposed hybrid measurement system - which combines panels and tag data - be audited, will revolutionise the way audience figures are reported. However while Megan Clarken, managing director at Nielsen Online, anticipates the upgrade of its online panel, the first step in its new methodology, will be rolled out mid year, she does not expect internal trial data to be available to publishers until the end of the year. She said Nielsen is happy to be working with the ABA on this initiative. “Nielsen Online and the ABC and CAB share a common goal of driving transparency and accountability with the online industry, and we are delighted to be working together to support this important initiative.”
IAB Australia has invited the ABA to join its Web Measurement Council. IAB chief Paul Fisher said the ABA’s audit expertise is the “last piece in the puzzle” as it works to develop online audience measurement standards in Australia. “We’re great believers in an audit mechanism but we don’t have an audit functionality or capability to carry it out so partnering with the ABA is a really positive step forward and really is the last piece of the puzzle,” he said. “I think we’ve still got some work to do on how it’s all going to play out but I think it’s a good thing that the ABA and IAB will work closely on an audit capability.” He added that while only ABA members will be audited under the new service, there is the potential for audits to roll out across the entire industry. “That’s one of the discussions we need to have at the IAB measurement council,” Fisher said. “We’ve got the ABA on board now and they’ve already got a system set up to audit their own members, so how do we now leverage this new found audit capability across the industry more widely?” “All this comes back to trying to promote a greater confidence in the medium so we can increase online advertising and the usage of the medium.”
