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November 12, 2009

Google Adds Analytics to DoubleClick for Advertisers

Google has unveiled two incremental changes to DoubleClick for media planning and analytics. It's all part of Google's hope to attract more display ad dollars.

The company described its new DFA Analytics tool as similar to Google Analytics. It will allow marketers to get regular campaign performance updates, in chart and graph form, and broken down by advertiser, campaigns, site, etc.

Also, for media planning, trafficking and reporting, marketers can now access Google Ad Planner within DFA. Both changes are available only in DFA 6.

Google called the new offerings, "just the beginning to a more unified, efficient, and effective advertising platform."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 7, 2009

Nielsen and IAB Display Ad Reports Off by $540 Million

A little addendum on some big numbers:

As a followup to my piece today on differences between online ad reports from TNS, Nielsen, and Interactive Advertising Bureau/PricewaterhouseCoopers, not only are the methodologies used by IAB far different from TNS and Nielsen, resulting in disparate ad spending growth rates, the actual dollar amounts estimated by Nielsen and IAB (TNS won't divulge theirs) are far off, too.

Nielsen's estimate for online display ad revenue in the first half of 2009 was $4.3 billion, according to my source there. The IAB, which measures several formats, estimated display spending ONLY in the same period at $3.76 billion. They include banners, rich media, video, and sponsorships in that number, yet the IAB's estimate is much more conservative: $540 million lower than Nielsen's display ad estimate in fact.

As I detail in my story today -- and in a previous piece about the Nielsen and TNS ad spending reports more specifically -- the IAB looks at ad revenue numbers provided by ad sellers and in tax filings, while the others estimate based on audience traffic, ad impressions and rate card prices.

I guess what I've been wondering lately, and why I've attempted to inspect online audience and ad measurement methodologies in recent years, is what are we supposed to make of these numbers if they're all so different? Publishers have been whining about third party audience measurement for years, but what about these spending reports?

They're among the few barometers we have for measuring the health of the online ad industry, and as far as I can tell, the state of the reports themselves could use a checkup.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 11, 2009

Nielsen Online Expands to South Korea

Nielsen has announced it is acquiring South Korean Web measurement firm KoreanClick for an undisclosed sum. Launched in 2000, the firm collects data on Internet usage and user attitudes, including audience measurement for applications such as online gaming and instant messaging. Clients currently include Internet firms, advertisers, and agencies.

Nielsen itself is already active locally in the retail and TV measurement space, but the purchase signifies its first foray into the online measurement market there. Its online arm is, however, already up and running in other Asia-Pacific territories, including China and Japan.

South Korea is widely accepted as one of the "most connected" nations in the world, and Nielsen estimates the user base there at around 40 million.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 5:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 20, 2009

New Ad System from Baidu Offers More Disclosure

Stories recommended by ClickZ's editors:

Baidu Touts New Advertising Program New system, rolled out in April, differentiates paid listings from organic results. Launch followed criticism that the Chinese search company provided inadequate disclosure of ad relationships. (Wall Street Journal)

Time Warner Signs Seven-Year Pact with Nielsen Deal includes TV, Internet and mobile measurement. Separately, Time Warner is involved with an NBC-backed startup designed to compete with Nielsen.

Patch Launches Two New Local Sites AOL-owned firm rolls out community sites in Summit, NJ and Darien, CT.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 17, 2009

TV and Cable Networks Prep Cross-Platform Competitor to Nielsen

Details are still emerging about a TV industry plan to launch a cross-platform measurement competitor to Nielsen. The service will be launched jointly by a consortium of broadcast and cable network owners that includes NBC Universal, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Time Warner, Discovery and Walt Disney.

The offering will track programs and ads as they're viewed across TV, Web sites and mobile devices. Nielsen has a converged TV and Internet panel, but it has fewer than 3,000 members and is considered in its very early phase. The networks may want to move faster than that.

Financial Times first reported on the consortium's existence last week. Under the plan, it said, the networks will award contracts to companies that measure set-top box data and other digital sources. It was not clear what the structure of the new offering would be -- whether a joint venture between six-plus companies, a startup with their tacit support, or something else. According to New York Times sources, NBC is the main force behind the initiative.

Major advertisers like Procter & Gamble and AT&T, and agencies such as WPP-owned GroupM and Starcom MediaVest are also attached to the project.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 25, 2009

Video Watch: Super Bowl Ad Propels Hulu Past Microsoft

We knew last week that Hulu's Super Bowl ad and its subsequent TV spots drove a surge of new users and viewing activity to the site. This week we learn a little more about just how much it benefited.

According to ComScore data released yesterday, Hulu beat out Microsoft-owned Web sites for the first time in both video views and unique video viewers, and now reaches a quarter of Internet video viewers.

The data show Hulu had roughly 240,000 video views in December, and 250,000 in January. Then, in February, the number leaped almost 30 percent to 332,000. Its unique users nearly doubled from roughly 24 million in December and January to 34 million last month. That growth is all the more striking when you consider how short the month was.

Of course, all that premium video viewing means the site will have scads more ad inventory, and we'll be watching to see how well it manages to sell that space. Of course Hulu's marketshare is still tiny compared with YouTube, which hosts 41 percent of all videos viewed, but given its premium content, it's vastly more saleable.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 10, 2008

The Rich Are Different Than...

An examination into the online behavior of the most affluent or "upper crust" people was an eye-opener for Bill Tancer, Hitwise general manager.

He shared this following anecdote during the SES Chicago keynote on Tuesday to make the point that online marketers have access to information that can inform marketing strategies:

Online brokerage accounts for E-Trade, Schwab, and Fidelity were among the top sites visited by the upper crust last year, according to Tancer.

A year later, guess what? The upper crust was seeking out diversions, taking stock of celebrity news instead of checking on their financial portfolios.

Under this scenario, online brokerages might be making a better bet advertising on PerezHilton.com than on business sites. Or if the market continues its meltdown, CNBC could replace Jim Cramer with Perez.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 25, 2008

A Little Growth Is Better Than Zero Growth

Another downward trending forcast, this time from eMarketer. The research firm has removed a digit from its 2009 interactive advertising spend forecast.

eMarketer's predicting 8.9 percent growth in ad spend next year, as opposed to the double-digit call they (and most other firms) were making last summer - in their case, 14.5 percent.

Glum? You shouldn't be. Growth is growth. You'd rather be working in financial services or the auto industry and experience negative growth? Times are tough all over, but up is still up.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 5, 2008

New Tool: Website Optimization ROI Calculator

How can you estimate the return on investment for optimizing your Web site?

The Website Optimization ROI Calculator, a new interactive tool, was developed by interactive agency ZAAZ. It helps digital marketers estimate return based on anticipated outcomes such as increasing site traffic.

Plug in the numbers, for instance, to evaluate how an investment can change the present and future value of your business.

For more details behind the calculator, read the column by Jason Burby, ZAAZ's chief analytics and optimization officer. Jason and his team at ZAAZ developed this tool.

The ROI calculator joins other invaluable digital marketing tools on ClickZ.

A new addition, the ClickZ Flashback Widget, provides historical perspective on today's news.

And the CPM Calculator, an old standby.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

October 28, 2008

Google, WPP Partner to Research Online Media's Impact

Curious about how online media influences consumer behavior? Google and WPP are. They're willing to contribute a collective $4.6 million over the next three years in grant money to endow the Google and WPP Marketing Research Awards Program, a joint research program to look into how online media influences consumer behavior, attitudes, and decision making.

The program will be overseen by professor John Quelch, senior associate dean of Harvard Business School and a non-executive director of WPP; Dr. Hal Varian, Google's chief economist; and professor Glen Urban, former dean of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The committee will work with WPP and Google to decide which grant proposals will be funded and ensure the integrity, delivery, and impact of the research. The program is immediately reviewing grant applications, and information is available here.

This is another case in which Google is forging stronger relationships with agencies. Last month the search giant outlined its relationship with Publicis, which was initially announced in January.

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 14, 2008

Myers Bullish on Online Growth

Longtime media analyst Jack Myers just released his 2009 Advertising and Marketing Investment Forecast.

While Jack predicts a 4 percent overall spending drop across all media, he believes online spending will rise nearly 14 percent, while clocking robust 60 percent growth in mobile marketing.

The forecast breaks advertising and marketing spending down into every conceivable channel, from satellite radio to trade show spending. It's well worth a read.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 5, 2008

Obama/McCain Ad Number Confusion

Yesterday, comScore released a report on the number of online ad impressions run by Barack Obama's and John McCain's presidential campaigns in 2008. As regular readers of ClickZ's Campaign '08 section know, we've been getting ad impression data among other related info from Nielsen Online's AdRelevance for months now. I figured I'd delve into previous AdRelevance reports and compare ad impression info from the two. I put together a chart displaying comScore's and Nielsen's ad impression data for the last 6 months (below).

Discrepancies? Oh yes.

Now, to be fair, comScore and Nielsen usually don't see eye-to-eye on anything. So, variations between the two can be expected. However, there are some real whoppers here when it comes to disparities.

Perhaps the most glaring difference is in the June numbers. AdRelevance says the Obama camp ran around 80 million, but ComScore pegged it at around 244 million ad impressions -- three times the AdRelevance number. And check out January '08. AdRelevance said McCain ran 19 million ad impressions, while comScore says it was more like 4.5 million. Confused?

I would be too. Though I'll continue to report this stuff, the impression numbers truly have to be taken as broad estimates. No matter whose numbers you look at, you'll find Obama's campaign is running more Web ads -- a lot more. And if you haven't seen my story today on how much he's spending on online ads, it hit $5 million sometime around July.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 13, 2008

ComScore Offers Potential and Actual Reach

ComScore said today it changed the way it's reporting on ad networks, effective with the August 2008 data. You'll get a chance to see the changes when they are released in mid-September.

Where previously comScore only provided data on unique audience, the new reporting will provide two sets of data measures: "potential reach" and "actual reach."

Potential reach is defined as "a calculation of unduplicated visitors all sites with which each ad network has contracted to deliver advertising," according to a comScore statement.The information will be based on written documentation provided by each of the networks.

Actual reach will represent the number of ads served by the network during a stated reporting period. Networks must provide comScore with identification protocols defined by the research firm for rendered ads to participate in the actual reach report.

See for yourself. Here's a look at comScore ad network rankings from earlier this year.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

August 1, 2008

ComScore Adds a Person, Plants a Tree

Online measurement research firm comScore has pledged to plant more than one million trees in developing nations as part of its panel recruitment program. In an initiative called "Trees for Knowledge," comScore plans to continue past the initial plantings as people join and remain active on the firm's panel.

To accomplish this program, which the research company announced earlier this week, comScore partnered with Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has helped communities throughout Central America, Africa, and Asia since 1988 by planting trees. The program also works in the U.S. to educate students and communities about global issues, the environment, and energy efficiency.

ComScore's panel is online-based, digital, and theoretically doesn't use lots of paper made from lots of trees.

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2008

NBC to Offer Show-Specific Data on Streamed Content

NBC Digital Entertainment will begin offering demographic data on individual shows streamed on its site. NBC.com's show-specific will be provided courtesy of Nielsen Online's VideoCensus beginning in July.

Digital Media Sales SVP Peter Naylor said advertisers have been requesting the show-level data. NBCU claims it's the network to carry Nielsen's tags on its streaming video content. How long before CBS, ABC, Fox and Hulu begin offering similar granular visibility into their online video audiences?

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 24, 2008

How Will Google Ad Planner Promote Network Inventory?

In his presentation at the ARF Measurement conference yesterday, Wayne Lin, business product manager at Google, stuck mainly to what the company had already announced about Ad Planner, its new audience research and media planning product.

Things got a little more interesting during the Q&A, when someone in the audience asked him how Google would promote sites in its own network. It was the first time Google has addressed its conflict of interest with the free tool. Lin said he believed the right approach is to follow the formula it used for organic versus paid listings in search.

"If we do benefit sites in our network, we should clearly label that," he said.

It's interesting to note he said the company "should," not that it "would," disclose properties its peddling. Keep an eye on this aspect of Ad Planner.

Designed for media planners, Ad Planner alllows its users to save their media plans or export them as a DoubleClick MediaVisor file. It uses the same data sources as the company's new Google Trends for Websites measurement play -- which is to say it pulls from search data, Google Analytics data, panel data and third party market research. (In retrospect, it was obvious what Google had in mind when it recently began asking Analytics users to specify whether their site data could be shared anonymously with its other apps.)

Lin said Google is now weighing whether to pursue Media Ratings Council accreditation, which would validate its measurement approach. One audience member called it "regrettable" that some firms had sought to create reliable audience estimates by fusing together different databases willy-nilly.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May 28, 2008

Measuring Engagement: What Does It Mean?

Lots of people in digital marketing are promoting the concept of tracking engagement -- instead of giving credit to the last ad clicked on a Web site.

But what exactly does "engagement" mean? That question was posed to a panel at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' digital conference today in New York City.

And, if David Smith, chief executive of MediaSmith, had his way, he'd head back to the drawing board -- or Webster's.

Keep in mind, it's been three years since Advertising Research Foundation first promoted the concept of measuring "engagement." And Microsoft backs it in a big way, calling its approach, "engagement mapping."

Trouble is, Smith said: "Engagement is more of a concept. It's such a common word. We use it everyday to describe what a campaign is doing -- when we are not talking about a metric at all."

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 13, 2008

Epic Intros View-Through-Like Metric

You've heard of induced labor. Now there are "induced visits!" At least that's what Epic Advertising, formerly Azoogle Ads, claims it can measure with its new Performance CPM metric. According to the company, an “induced” site visit is one resulting "in any way from an ad," even if there's no direct click-through. The metric also considers CPC, CPM and CPA tracking and brand impact.

Being a performance marketing firm, Epic serves direct-response advertisers who pay on a cost-per-click or per-action basis. It looks as though the company may now want to branch out by better serving brand marketers, or perhaps by demonstrating that there's value even if an ad isn't clicked.

This "new" metric reminds me quite a bit of something developed by DoubleClick years ago, called view-through. That metric gauges user activity after a user has been exposed to an ad but hasn't clicked on it.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 6, 2008

Calculate the Value of a Widget -- in a Widget

Thank DoubleClick for this nifty tool: a widget that calculates the value of a widget.

Google's Ari Paparo, previously DoubleClick's VP, advertiser products, brought it to marketers' attention yesterday at IAB's digital video leadership forum. He participated on the panel, "Format Wars No More."

When asked if brands will start tracking mentions on Twitter, Ning, and other social applications, Paparo pointed out that tracking is fairly easy to do.

But assigning value to that chatter is tough. Paparo likened it to attending a party, picking up business cards, and then trying to attach a dollar value to that experience.

Sounds like a good candidate for another widget calculator.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 30, 2008

When Failure Is the ROI Goal

Shouldn't marketing be more than just going through the motions?

Over coffee the other day, one of the top e-mail consultants in the country told me about a surprise revelation from a client, one of the major broadband providers in the country.

She's charged with an e-mail retention program aimed at the telco's broadband subscribers. So naturally you'd think that the more subscribers who re-upped their annual contracts, the better the program was performing, right?

Not so fast.

In a recent meeting, the client let drop that subscribers who don't renew their DSL contracts are charged higher monthly fees, and that the majority of lapsed subscribers simply don't notice the rise in costs. "So," my friend incredulously asked her client, "you're telling me that the more this program doesn't work, the more money you make?"

"Well...yes," came the reply.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 23, 2008

What Time Is It in the Cloud?

These days, my head is in the cloud.

More and more companies are rolling out cloud computing solutions and applications. On the consumer level, it's getting easier and easier for documents, spreadsheets, e-mail, calendars, presentations, you name it, to live in the ether somewhere above the hard drive, always on and always accessible.

Way cool, and an emerging opportunity for advertisers and marketers to push relevant, contextual messages to cloud computing users.

But what time is it in the cloud? I'm wondering this as I shuttle between the East and West coasts, wielding a battery of BlackBerry, mobile phone, and the laptop I'm using to access the book I'm writing entirely on Google Docs (not a word of the manuscript is on my hard drive).

Some of these devices are set to the time zone I'm actually in, others are set to the one I live in. So how's an advertiser to know what's relevant messaging? Should an ad be pushed for a business or service in Sonoma (where I'm speaking today), or New York (where I live?). Does the cloud know if I'm working at lunchtime or at dinnertime?

Geo- and daypart targeting has long been used in traditional as well as interactive marketing. When life literally shifts to online -- as users move into the cloud -- how will this element of targeting be achieved?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 22, 2008

Another Day, Another Interactive Ad Group

Just when you thought there were enough interactive advertising task forces, councils, and advisory groups, here's the latest.

Break Media, an online community for men and an ad network, has decided there's more to life -- and business -- than hot women, gear, and gossip. That includes the all mighty dollar and figuring out how to calculate online video advertising's return on investment.

The company, which operates sites such as Chickipedia (a wiki of hot women) and Cage Potato (Mixed Martial Arts news), announced today it's taking the lead to form a council to examine the effectiveness of online video ads.

Online Video Advertising ROI Council is represented by some high-profile brands, agencies, and technology vendors. (The new media company made the announcement today at the historic 21 Club in midtown Manhattan. Jacket required.)

Break chief executive Keith Richman, in an interview, said traditional advertisers want assurances that money spent on online video ads is beneficial. Before that can occur, advertisers must reach some agreement on what metrics to use to help with that assessment.

The advertising ROI council members include Ogilvy One, truTV, National Geographic Channel, AT&T, Starcom, eMarketer , Panache, Lotame, Visible Measures, Horizon Media, and Initiative Media. It also brought in Visible Measures, to help establish metrics to determine ROI and intends to meet every three months to share information among its membership.

The council's formation comes just as the IAB is updating digital video ad format guidelines for in-stream, overlay, and video companion ads. That undertaking is intended to simplify ad specs plus other goals.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 31, 2008

Are TV Networks Measuring What Counts?

Alan Wurtzel, NBC's president of research and media development, is presenting research at the ARF Re:Think conference essentially in defense of network TV. He's claiming TV viewing hasn't decreased as a resut of the Web, rather that people are absorbing more media simultaneously as they multitask.

He's also showing eye-tracking scans taken of views as they fast-forward through :30 spots on DVRs. The graphics are supposed to indicate these viewers concentrate more intently on the center of the screen as the ads whiz by, indicating there's no real conscious absorption of the ad message, but there's nevertheless an unconscious message being conveyed.

This sounds dubious. Sure, networks are bound to conduct research in their own interests -- why wouldn't they? But the message coming through from Wurtzel (who's still talking) is that while consumers certainly are still watching TV, they're significantly less focused on it. In fact, they may even be most intent on the set when they're trying to avoid something rather than watch it.

This raises questions about engagement, something the ARF is still working to define.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 13, 2008

Interactive TV Not Measuring Up

Interactive television won't succeed until cable companies reach agreement on measurement standards, said two Starcom MediaVest executives.

An initiative undertaken by six major cable companies, called Canoe, is a step in the right direction, said Jen Soch, MediaVest USA's VP and director of advanced TV.

Tracey L. Scheppach, vice president/video innovation director at Starcom USA, said flaws include video-on-demand's poor navigation and an inability to insert ads dynamically.

Unless these shortcomings are addressed, Soch and Scheppach warned that advertising dollars would move into broadband. Both spoke today at day two of the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York City.

Problem is, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That's because interactive TV's promise hasn't been fulfilled for at least three decades.

Expressing a little more optimism was Scott Brown, SVP, strategic relations, marketing/technology at Nielsen. The media measurement firm is working with Charter Communications to obtain and resell anonymous digital set-top box (STB) data for analyzing and measuring audience. That venture, announced yesterday, involves TV viewers in Los Angeles.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 29, 2008

ComScore Weighs in on Google Click Volume Debacle Sparked by Its Data

Earlier this week, when comScore set off a GOOG selling frenzy on Wall Steet with data showing click rate growth had flattened, I called the research firm for comment but to no avail. Amazing what 48 hours can bring. After a continued outcry, comScore has now issued a lengthy statement with additional data and charts (previously unavailable to non-clients) arguing, basically, that everyone should just calm down. Here's the money quote:

While we do not claim that these concerns are unwarranted, we believe a careful analysis of our search data does not lend them direct support. More specifically, the evidence suggests that the softness in Google’s paid click metrics is primarily a result of Google’s own quality initiatives that result in a reduction in the number of paid listings and, therefore, the opportunity for paid clicks to occur.

ComScore also shared the following chart, which demonstrates that click rates declined for much of last year, long before economic fears began bleeding into the nation's collective consciousness. It also shows how ad coverage, defined as the percentage of queries that display at least one ad, has declined roughly in parallel to click volume growth.

So you see, comScore says, Google is pumping fewer ads to its users and receiving fewer clicks in return. ComScore theorizes that reduction will be counterbalanced by an increase in revenue per query under the click quality initiative

On a separate but related note, agency heavy SearchIgnite has said it's seen none of the click volume declines described by comScore data, nor revenue shortfalls either. The agency, which claims to represent $200 million in search spending, said ad impressions for the first six weeks of 2008 were up 79.5 percent year over year, while paid clicks were up 47.2 percent. Additionally, ad spending on Google grew by 40.1 percent among the same group of clients (In other words the data doesn't include new business).

SearchIgnite's research should not be considered representative of the search industry at large, as it's just one agency with a defined group of clients who all share one thing in common: they follow SearchIgnite's advice. But then, can comScore's data be treated as really representative of consumers' click behaviors? After all, the company was seriously challenged by the IAB last year, and publishers of all stripes love to take potshots at its audience and traffic estimates.

My take continues to be that while the click rate fall-off is not necessarily the result of a lack of consumer confidence, a lack of confidence is bound to result in a reduction in click volume. More succinctly: No, Google's not insulated from a recession and no, comScore's findings are not (necessarily) a bad sign.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 26, 2008

Quote of the Day: Microsoft/Atlas "Engagement Mapping"

"The cynic in me isn’t surprised that Microsoft’s got a long line of agencies waiting to test this stuff, since it justifies spending more money on ads with crap click-through and conversion rates even when the real purchases are coming from a keyword buy on a competitor’s search engine [keywords]. But the basic argument -- some people see an ad and then decide to act later -- seems sound. I just don’t know what proportion of users do this, vs. the ones that just didn’t notice the earlier ads. After all, if you know a user’s browser loaded four of your banners without results, but then the user clicked on a fifth, you still don’t know much."

-Greg Yardley, writing on his blog about Engagement Mapping, Microsoft's new approach to gauging impact and optimizing spend for ad impressions across search and display ads. (See ClickZ's earlier coverage.)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 13, 2008

Ogilvy Data Honcho Flies to Draft

Ogilvy's data and analytics guru of seven years, Ira Helf, has made like a tree and, uh, leaved. He'll join Draftfcb as EVP and executive director of data and analytics. He's the second senior exec with major digital responsibilities to quit Ogilvy in recent weeks, after e-mail head Jeanniey Mullen bolted to take the top marketing spot at Zinio.

At Draft, Helf will report to New York President Peter DeNunzio, who told me yesterday the role is not limited to digital channels, but will oversee data and reporting needs "from upfront work on segmentation and modeling to campaign... metrics on the back end." Helf's bio credits him from expanding Ogilvy's analytics practice from its focus on digital and direct into brand advertising and events marketing.

The two departures at Ogilvy follow a round of January layoffs that were at least partly the result of client demand for digital expertise. I have it on good information that at least one other female digital exec, this one from Neo@Ogilvy, is also on the way out or has already left. If you know who that might be, please shoot me an e-mail.

Update: Ogilvy makes a hire of its own. Marc Fleishhacker just joined Ogilvy New York from Digitas. He'll be senior partner and managing director of Ogilvy's marketing technology consulting practice, overseeing the new Sears/Kmart bidness.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 11, 2008

WPP Acquires Stake Web Analytics firm NuConomy

WPP announced today that it has acquired a stake in Israeli Web analytics company NuConomy, although it would not reveal how big a stake it has or how much it was worth.

The NuConomy platform appears to be in beta, judging from the company's Web site, but claims to "measure consumers' engagement and interaction with content, while giving advertisers actionable insight into the audience they engage with."

The acquisition follows a handful of recent WPP investments in digital media firms, including Integrated Media Measurement Inc., VideoEgg, SpotRunner and Dutch interactive agency LaCommunidad. Rumors that it would make a move to acquire the outstanding share of SpotRunner have been circulating for months, with no new developments.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 7, 2008

Web Analytics and Your Tax Dollars

You'd think cash-strapped government agencies that operate Web sites would jump at the availability of free and very robust tools such as Google Analytics.

Think again.

Earlier this week, I was on a fascinating call with the people who run many of the major federal government Web sites. The group included one woman who does the same for a state agency. We mostly talked metrics, and what measurements to consider when gauging the performance of sites that are non-commercial in nature -- like theirs.

Given the budgetary constraints these sites operate under, we spent a good deal of time discussing free (and very low cost), Web-based measurement tools, such as Alexa.com, Compete.com, and Quantcast. And, of course, Google Analytics.

That's when the woman from the state agency spoke up. Because her site represents a state government, and because hers is not the state of California, she cannot use Google Analytics on the site she operates. Why? Google's TOS, which specify "This Agreement shall be governed by and construed under the laws of the state of California..."

That's why at least one state agency is paying for (an admittedly more robust) commercial analytics package.

OK, so it's not $3.1 trillion in defense spending. But still.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WPP's GroupM Acquires Majority Stake in Social Media Agency

WPP's GroupM announced today that it has acquired 75 percent of the share capital of LaCommunidad, the Dutch interactive agency behind imaginatively named viral tracking technology, ViralTracker.

LaCommunidad specializes in viral and social media campaigns, and has worked with big name European brands including ebay, Ford, and Dutch Airline KLM. According to a release today, the investment "continues WPP's strategy of strengthening its capabilities in digital media."

WPP recently acquired a minority stake in U.S.-based Integrated Media Measurement Inc., the developer of an end-to-end media measurement system that links media exposure to consumer action.

However, rumors of a more significant ad-related investment have been circulating since last September. One possible target is rumored to be SpotRunner, an Internet agency offering localized Web and TV ads for small businesses, in which WPP already owns a small stake.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 31, 2008

TiVo Tracks Another Network

CBS became the second network to sign up for TiVo's Stop||Watch service. The broadcaster will have access to second-by-second measurement of program and commercial ratings for live and time-shifted viewing. NBC partnered with TiVo in December around the time of the DVR provider's earnings call. Networks are looking for more measurability in both broadcast and online formats as capabilities arise. The online counterpart of tracking viewing behavior, VisibleSuite was discussed at DEMO this week.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 16, 2008

Compete Gets Into Competitive Ad Tracking

Compete, a Web site measurement and competitive analytics firm, has come out with an a new ad performance analytics tool called Ad Analyzer. The offering promises to track campaign impact for its clients and their competitors within specified customer segments. Most Ad Analyzer customers will focus on the competitive data, since the bulk of ad tracking and serving systems out there let them measure the effectiveness of their own ads and landing pages.

Here's a rundown of the specific data Ad Analyzer promises to track, pulled directly from the press release:

* Share of unique visitors continuing on to the brand’s site, vs. leaving, after seeing the landing page
* Click-and-return rate - Share of unique visitors returning to the brand’s site within 30 days of seeing the landing page
* Funnel entry - Share of unique visitors to a landing page that enter the online shopping cart or online application process
* Offline Lead: - Share of unique visitors to a landing page referred to the brand offline
* Order submission - Share of unique visitors to a landing page who submit an order or form in the same quarter

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 4, 2008

The Seedy Side of Sears

Over the holiday season, Sears.com and Kmart.com customers got an added bonus: tracking software many experts classify as spyware. Computer Associates Senior Researcher Benjamin Googins was asked to join MY SHC Community and through detailed reporting, determined the procedure failed to give users proper notice of what they were doing. Ultimately, Sears had users opt-in to install comScore tracking software. Further research was conducted by Ben Edelman, who contacted Sears and got a response about how SHC "goes through great lengths to describe the tracking aspect." To which Edelman states, "I emphatically disagree."

In a period where Web audience measurement is under scrutiny, it's surprising to see the terms and conditions obfuscated when installing tracking software on user machines, if that is what Sears is, in fact, doing. Edelman alleges the practice is in violation of FTC rulings.

Further digging by Edelman uncovered another issue on Sears' managemyhome.com site. Once logged into the site, he discovered users can look up the purchase history of other managemyhome.com members. When I tried to visit the Web site, it wouldn't load. I'm unsure whether the site is having issues, or if it's been taken down due to these findings.

Sears did not respond to a phone call requesting comment on either matter.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 12, 2007

Romney Ran on Other Gay Sites: Story Prompts Major Nielsen Data Revision

Last month, The New York Times reported the campaign for Republican presidential primary contender Mitt Romney ran thousands of ad impressions on Gay.com in August. It turns out, apparently a result of ad network targeting or lack thereof, the campaign also ran about 5,000 display ads on other gay-centric sites Advocate.com and PlanetOut. That's according to Nielsen Online AdRelevance.

When I first read the Times piece, I was puzzled. After all, I'd sifted through AdRelevance data for the same period as part of ClickZ's ongoing Campaign '08 coverage back in September. Had I overlooked this juicy detail about Romney's ads when AdRelevance sent me the August data?

Nope. After contacting Nielsen Online, I learned that the August information on political advertisers they'd originally sent me, which did not list Romney as an advertiser, had since been revised to include the Romney ads. Those updates were prompted by inquiries for The New York Times story, they said.

But it didn't end there. Incomplete data from AdRelevance had found its way into six stories published by ClickZ between April and September of this year. What follows is a detailed description of how I became aware of the data discrepancies.

Obama Ads Uncovered Along with Other Discrepancies

According to the original data, the only presidential campaign in the "political advertisers" category in August was John McCain 2008. However, the new data showed in addition to the uncovered Romney ads, Democratic Senator Barack Obama's campaign also ran display ads that month.

These revelations were disconcerting for me as a reporter. Not only have I received AdRelevance data on political campaigns for years now, I've developed a new ClickZ Campaign '08 News sub-section devoted to covering digital ad and marketing efforts by the 2008 presidential campaigns.

At ClickZ News, we pride ourselves on getting our reporting right, but when it comes to tracking online ads in any cohesive manner, we're only as good as the data we're provided. Political campaigns, particularly national ones, typically are very reluctant to share any information about their tactics, including their online ad buys. And Nielsen Online is the only measurement firm out there that tracks online display ads run by political advertisers in any regular, quantifiable manner that will supply this information to ClickZ.

Keep in mind, I realize information provided by Nielsen and others is not always 100 percent accurate, and when I've been aware of data gaps, I've made note of it. For instance, when covering July presidential campaign ads, I wrote that although AdRelevance did not report them, "PointRoll expandable video banners for Senator Barack Obama have been spotted around the Web this month, including on UnionLeader.com, where early primary voters in New Hampshire reading the Manchester-based newspaper site would be sure to catch them."

The Flood Gates Open

And what about previous months? I'd been reporting on AdRelevance data on the presidential campaigns since April. It didn't take long to learn the research firm had revised its data on political advertisers for previous months, too, but ClickZ had never been notified. It seems as though the errors would have lived in perpetuity on ClickZ had I not investigated the August Romney data discrepancies.

ClickZ recently was provided with updates of all revised data we originally reported between April and September; changes in the process for compiling and reporting on political ads were reflected in data provided to ClickZ for October. After receiving updates, I found the original information was off by a little or a lot each month, in some cases missing millions of ad impressions or skipping campaigns for presidential candidates entirely, such as Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Romney.

"These are the types of feedback that we value… to continually evolve our service," said Jason Lee, senior project manager for AdRelevance in reference to a discussion I had with him a few weeks ago about the situation.

Lee and his colleague, Jon Gibs, VP of media analytics for Nielsen Online, helped me understand what went wrong and why. "I think it has to do with the protocols we have set up for categorizing advertisers in general," said Lee. "In the case of political advertisers, those protocols and rules may not have been flexible enough."

In a nutshell, the AdRelevance system determines the sites it will monitor based on weekly traffic numbers. After intercepting ads running on those sites, the ads are categorized by a classification team. These are the folks who decide an ad run by John McCain 2008 or Obama for America goes in the "political advertisers" category as opposed to the auto or CPG category.

In the case of the Obama campaign ads missed in initial reports for August and other months, Lee explained, "A human did likely see the ad…. For some reason or another it slipped through the cracks."

In the cases of ads that were ignored the first time around, most likely what happened is they simply weren't classified, said Gibs. "We set up what we think is a very good system to track major advertisers," he stressed, noting AdRelevance was originally designed to track big commercial advertisers -- the Fords and AT&Ts of the world. "Because political flighting was very small in the beginning, it wasn't fully on our radar screen," he added.

"During this particular campaign season there's a lot more scrutiny, and a lot more attention being paid to what the campaigns are doing online," said Lee. Note, I've been receiving and reporting on political campaign ad data from AdRelevance for years now.

"Going forward we're confident the data should be where it is now if not at a higher point" in terms of quality, Lee told me.

The Politics of Data

Political advertising is a beast unto itself. Understanding the difference, for instance, between Congressman Ron Paul's campaign running ads and the Americans United for Freedom PAC running ads on his behalf will come about "by process of experience" for AdRelevance's classification team, Lee said.

The reality is, in politics as in just about anything else, polling and other forms of measurement are prone to error. In the end, the best ClickZ can do is update our own reporting with the correct information, as well as do everything possible to vet that information. Because we can't go back in time and see whether an ad ran on a particular site, nor can we here in NYC be served ads targeted to people living in Des Moines or people with different demographic characteristics or browsing histories, we are limited in our ability to ensure data are flawless.

Still, as online political marketing becomes more widespread, it's important for its evolution to be chronicled. That's my goal with previous political ad coverage in ClickZ News and our Campaign '08 coverage. So, even when there are bumps along the campaign reporting trail, we believe it makes more sense to continue reporting these data even if sometimes they're not perfect.

We also look forward to working with Nielsen Online and other measurement firms to continue improving the information available on online political campaigns. It's a learning process for everyone, most of all the political campaigns themselves.

Lee affirmed this, noting, "Online advertising is obviously constantly evolving. It's our goal is to consistently evolve our product to keep in step with that."

For details on revised AdRelevance data for the months of April through September, check out the original stories, which have all been updated:
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 5, 2007

Nielsen Tracks TV Content on the Web through Digital Watermarks

Though a partnership with Digimarc, Nielsen will use digital watermarking and fingerprinting in online content to provide reporting, and tracking on copyrighted materials. The digital watermarking service is called Nielsen Digital Media Manager.

In addition to tracking for copyright security and compliance, the watermark allows clients to realize the value of their digital content, promote the expansion of Internet-distirbuted media, and facilitate a number of revenue streams. Those include ad-pairing, e-commerce, royalty reporting. Nielsen plans to start by tracking TV content online, but expects to expand to other online content categories and media types.

"We started with TV because we already do the necessary encoding - or watermarking - when we measure TV ratings. The last thing a video stream sees before it leaves a TV station is a Nielsen encoder that puts a digital code on the programming that our home meters can read. That same code can be used to measure TV programming when it is posted on the Internet," said Nielsen company spokesperson Gary Holmes.

News of the Digital Media Manager offering was broken earlier today by The Wall Street Journal (link, subscription required). However the article focused more on piracy prevention than content measurement. The article accuses Nielsen of being late to the game and "in some ways at a disadvantage to its rivals." Though digital watermarks are widely used for copyright protection on digital media, the tracking and ad-pairing components are not a standard feature.

"There are a lot of smaller companies that would like to deliver tracking services but none of them have the system in place to encode all TV programming," said Holmes. "That is why Nielsen is so well-positioned to break the logjam between the content providers and the distributors. Content providers have been reluctant to allow their content to appear on Web sites because they would lose control over it. This new service would give them control and make them more likely to agree to posting on the Web."

On Nielsen's radar for the Digital Media Manager product are media companies, social networks, peer-to-peer services, and user-generated content sites.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 1, 2007

The Digestible Data Package

Data is a fact of necessity for advertisers and marketers, yet it's expensive for some of the small shops to afford subscriptions, or shell out for full reports. San Francisco-based Media-Screen recognized the issue and launched Netpop Research, "a tiered subscription model for access to graphs that are borne out of our Netpop ongoing studies," said Josh Crandall, managing director of Media-Screen.

Subscriptions access consumer behavior data for $24.95 to $999.95 per month payable through PayPal. The subscription grants access to a research catalog, and subscribers get a number of credits to redeem each month. The low end gets access to five graphs per month, and the higher level gets access to 1,000 graphs per month. Higher-level subscriptions also allow users access to competitive landscape data.

Media-Screen's ongoing Netpop research has tackled topics including profiling broadband user personalities and mobile Web adoption. In addition to the graphs and competitive landscape data, Media-Screen will still make research reports available on an ad-hoc basis.

Netpop won't replace comScore and Nielsen data on audience measurement, but it works to "triangulate a marketer's analysis of the marketplace," said Crandall.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 31, 2007

Worldwide Mobile Subscriber Forecast

Data released by the Shosteck Group and its strategic partner the Mobile World forecasts 3.3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by year end. Of those subscribers, roughly 2.6 billion are served by GSM, GPRS, and EDGE networks; 190 million operate on W-CDMA networks; and 422 million on CDMA2000 standards. The remaining few use technologies such as iDEN. By 2011 the research anticipates 5.4 billion mobile subscribers globally. The breakdown will be roughly 2.8 billion on GSM, GPRS, and EDGE networks; 1.8 billion on W-CDMA; and 783 million on CDMA2000.

Posted by Enid Burns at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 29, 2007

New and Returning Clickstream

Hitwise today enhanced its clickstream reporting to include competitive intelligence on new and returning visitors. While you might get this data for your own site from a Web metrics package, access to competing sites, partner sites, or publishers you're looking to advertise on isn't automatically available. The data lets you understand the strategy and effectiveness of competitive marketing programs to see if competitors are more focused on traffic-driving campaigns versus retention; identify where new and returning visitors go after visiting a Web site, which can reduce churn if used effectively; and analyze a competitor's audience in terms of new and repeat traffic.

Posted by Enid Burns at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 23, 2007

Habeas 'E-Mail Insecurity Factor' Findings

This week Habeas released the results to a study on e-mail study on e-mail, in which it found a certain e-mail insecurity factor among Internet users. Don't worry; e-mail is still one of the more relied-upon communication channels, particularly online. However consumers segregate communications among multiple accounts depending on trust factors in an effort to filter spam and other security threats. Habeas plans to present its findings and a detailed report in a Webinar, "Multichannel Revolution, How Web 2.0 and Online Reputation Changes Strategy and Results," on November 13 at 2:00 p.m. EST/11:00 a.m. PST. You can register for the Webinar here.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 28, 2007

comScore and NetRatings Race to Audit Finish Line

Following a self-aggrandizing press release from Nielsen//NetRatings in which the measurement firm boasted that it's leading the Media Rating Council accreditation process, its competitor comScore has just announced that it will indeed go through with a full MRC audit. It had been in the pre-audit phase till now.

Sure, the IAB has cracked the whip on these guys to get their systems and methodologies audited, but does this really need to be a race?

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Will Tech Tools Strangle Online Ad Growth?

Will the online advertising and marketing industry be held back by a shortage of people who possess the right mix of creative and quantitative skills? That was the assessment of some practitioners at Advertising Week in New York City.

ClickZ posed that question to Laura Thieme, president of Bizresearch, a Worthington, OH, consultancy specializing in search marketing. She recognizes challenges in finding talent, but says the industry's growing pains can be attributed to other factors -- especially technology.

The biggest obstacle? "The sheer number of [software] tools that exist," she said in a telephone interview this week. "Considering the tools that are getting updated, the acquisitions that are occurring or the new platforms getting rolled out, quite frankly, an analytic or IT [information technology] person would find it difficult to keep up with change," she said.

To quantity the problem, Thieme and her team identified the tools used to service the firm's top five accounts. Guess what? For a single account, they work with as many as 27 tools.

Of the 27, about seven to 10 were productivity tools such as Excel. The rest? Web site analytics, social media tracking, HTML authoring and paid search tools.

On Thieme's wish list: tools that allow for better or easier integration of data. It's difficult, she said, to analyze the results from a search campaign if you cannot easily compare the data collected by other tools. "You can tag your campaign. You can get it to work with LivePerson or ClickTracks, but oh gosh, that's one more integration that we'll put on the tech project list," she said, providing one scenario.

On the talent front, Thieme said the firm has a rigorous hiring and testing process. "We have found you can get creative people to gravitate toward analytics," she said. In instances where a talented creative person cannot master analytics, Thieme might still hire her but won't put her in charge of a major campaign.

To ensure that marketing students learn about the latest in Web analytics and search, Thieme teaches a class on the topic at Ohio State University. Of the 26 students in the class, three got jobs with Bizresearch and one went to work in interactive as an intern at P&G.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 25, 2007

IAB Calls Slowing Online Ad Spending Growth "Torrid"

Online ad spending has grown at "a torrid pace," 26.8 percent, during the first half of this year over the same period last year, Randall Rothenberg told a packed crowd at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX conference in New York yesterday. The IAB prez said spending hit the $10 billion milestone in the first half. "This is the first time in history this has happened," he gushed.

When the IAB reported numbers for the first half of '06 from its regular online ad spending report (conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers), it pegged spending at $7.9 billion, a 37 percent increase over the same period the year before.

Sure, nobody's saying 26.8 percent growth isn't moving at a fast clip, but during the first half of last year it grew 10 percent more over the previous year.

As reported here last week, though the reports would have us believe that online spending is scorching, it might be smart to temper that a bit, considering both Nielsen and TNS also reported slowing Web ad spending growth during the first half of '07 compared to that period of '06. Yes, it's becoming bigger piece of the overall ad spending pie, but the fact is, all three of these measures -- IAB, Nielsen and TNS -- show spending growth has dwindled since last year at this time.

Taking into consideration the IAB counts a variety of online ad forms including the monster that is search, in addition to just display ads like TNS and Nielsen do, this is an important caveat.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 24, 2007

Internet Broadcasting: Traffic on the Rise to Local TV Station Sites

Traffic to TV station Web sites just experienced two consecutive record-setting months, according to data released today by Internet Broadcasting, which supports local publishers like NBC, Cox Television and Meredith Broadcasting. IB's site partners saw 15.8 million unique visitors in July, followed by 16.7 million in August, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, handily beating the previous record of 15.4 million visitors recorded last February. Page views in July were over a half-billion for the first time.

The firm said the record traffic was driven by weather-related events and new distribution strategies, including IB's content alliance with CNN.com. the data comes from approximately 70 TV station Web sites.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 17, 2007

IAB Touts Audit Progress, Unveils Research Advisory Board

Since ClickZ last reported on their audit status, not much has transpired with comScore and Nielsen/NetRatings. Today, the Interactive Advertising Bureau sent out a re-cap of what's gone down since April, when the organization sternly suggested the two audience measurement firms have their methodologies analyzed by the Media Ratings Council in the hopes of being accredited.

According to the IAB, comScore has completed its pre-audit, but hasn't set out a timeline for the full audit. Nielsen/NetRatings is going through its full audit now.

Since the IAB really got this audit ball rolling in the first place, a progress report makes sense right about now, especially when other groups like the Advertising Research Foundation are making noise about ensuring the quality and validity of research conducted online. While the groups have different agendas, it's clear the interactive industry zeitgeist is focused on research and measurement quality and transparency.

The IAB also announced today the formation of a Research Advisory Board, an addition to its already-functioning Research Council. The new group will "define the cross-industry efforts necessary to educate the industry about critical issues in audience measurement," according to a press release.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 14, 2007

Old Dudes Dig Fred

On top of what we've been providing on a regular basis, we've got some more interesting tidbits on traffic to presidential candidate sites from Hitwise. For one -- not that this would come as much of a surprise -- older men are gravitating towards Fred Thompson’s official campaign site. During the four weeks ending September 8, over 65 percent of Thompson site visitors were male, and around 40 percent were 55 or older. Almost 11 percent of his site visitors were from Tennessee, where he once served as a U.S. Senator.

Also of interest: Libertarian-style Republican candidate Ron Paul's site grabbed the most traffic from social sites like Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. Official sites from Dems Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were next in line when it came to traffic arriving from such sites.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 22, 2007

Epsilon Rebrands Data Services as Abacus

Following last year's acquisition of Abacus, a data firm previously owned by DoubleClick, Epsilon has rebranded all its data services to reflect the integrated brand. The shift toward using the Abacus name was undertaken "after bringing Abacus into our family earlier this year, we immediately recognized the tremendous brand equity we had across our two well-established brands," said Michael Iccarino, president and CEO of Epsilon, in a company statement.

The data services from Epsilon will rebrand as follows.

• Epsilon's Advantage Choice is now Abacus Consumer.
  
• Epsilon's New Mover is now Abacus New Mover.
  
• Epsilon's Target Source is now Abacus Survey.
  
• Abacus Consumer Alliance is now Abacus Consumer Cooperative.
  
• Abacus Business to Business Alliance is now Abacus Business to Business Cooperative.

  Epsilon also launched Abacus Business, which includes data on 22 million businesses. Data operations under the existing Abacus cooperative including Abacus [ONE], Abacus FastPath, Abacus Market Insight, Abacus BuyerPoint, and Abacus ChannelView continue unchanged from previous offerings.

  Posted by Enid Burns at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  August 8, 2007

  Why is NetRatings Not on ARF's Research Quality Committee?

  Post by Kate Kaye:

  Today we reported on the Ad Research Foundation's new initiative to develop guidelines for panel-based research online. I asked Nielsen//NetRatings, an ARF member, why the company doesn't have a representative on the steering committee for the Online Research Quality Council.

  Nielsen came back with a statement from its VP of Product Marketing and Measurement Science Mainak Mazumdar:

  "Nielsen is an active member of the ARF and NetRatings participates in a number of its initiatives. In the case of this initiative, the council appears -- at least based on its members -- to be looking at online access panels as opposed to the metered media and market research panels that we focus on at NetRatings. We continue to be involved with the various industry bodies, including the ARF, IAB and MRC -- and are actively involved in the accreditation process with the MRC."

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  August 3, 2007

  Web Site Maintenance

  There's a few tools at your disposal to make sure your site runs smoothly, and that your site provides the best brand experience. After releasing RIAx to measure rich media applications in May, Avenue A / Razorfish this week released Super-intelligent Link Crawler (SiLC). The tool crawls Web sites to find broken links and 404 error messages. It also analyzes why errors occur, and looks into how your Web site is seen by search engines, and how to improve those results. Avenue A / Razorfish used SiLC in conjunction with SEO and Web design teams to evaluate U.S. News & World Report's site. The tool determined the site's articles weren't being ranked because the Web and print versions registered as duplicates. The two months after the evaluation and relaunch, the site saw 24 percent increase in organic visits, and 45 percent increase in organic visits from Google compared to the previous year.

  Accenture's Marketing Sciences division has a new Web site benchmarking system called Accenture Web Evaluator. The tool analyzes how ell company's Web sites attract and retain customers, support and reinforce their brand, deliver services, and generate sales. Accenture evaluated over 260 Web sites using nine key factors comprised of 33 criteria based on delivering high-performing, branded customer experiences on the Web. The top sites include Nike, Ford, Google, Adidas, and Microsoft. Those nine factors: search and navigation; information; service; engagement; relationship building; branding; e-commerce; globalization; and number of visitors.

  Both tools provide insights, and possibly overlap with existing Web analytics solutions you may already have in place to measure your site. Many of those Web analytics products area also getting updates as the demand for better metrics and site optimization escalates.

  Posted by Enid Burns at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  July 16, 2007

  Trade Group Forms to Tackle Standards in Downloadable Media

  Does podcast media require its own industry association, separate from the IAB, AAAA and other existing options? A group of companies including Apple, NPR, Nielsen Online, Kiptronic and PodTech appears to think so.

  Those firms are among the 14 that have banded together to try and standardize advertising and audience measurement for downloadable files. The group is calling itself the Association for Downloadable Media, and will focus mainly on podcasts and other downloadable content delivered via RSS, peer-to-peer, mobile, site downloads and "other platforms to come."

  ADM said it plans to cooperate rather than compete with fellow trade organizations like those listed above. In addition to its principle charter to develop standards, it will also engage in industry outreach and education. Support and membership will be extended not only publishers and producers of downloadable content, but also advertisers, agencies, research firms, and hardware and software makers involved with the medium.

  The group, which didn't return a phone call seeking more information, so far consists only of an initial advisory board. It said five committees would quickly be formed to address specific mandates.

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  June 28, 2007

  Google Top Referral Site for Clinton, Paul in May

  Presidential contenders, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Ron Paul came out on top among major party presidential candidates when it came to traffic to their official campaign sites in May, according to Hitwise. The site measurement firm just sent me some supplemental data showing the top five referral sites driving that traffic for each.

  Both candidates' sites have four referral sites in common, Google, MySpace, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail. Yep, Google comes out on top, driving nearly 20 percent of traffic to those sites. Check out the rest here, part of ClickZ's ongoing election data coverage.

  If you haven't caught our other recent election-related data coverage, here are a few more links:

  Giuliani Site Visitors Seek Health Content, Clinton's Go for Games and Country Music

  Candidates Using E-mail for More Than Fundraising in May, June

  Clinton on CNN Only, McCain on Conservative Sites and Networks in April

  Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  June 27, 2007

  Can Mobile Measure OOH Media Exposure?

  Can mobile devices enable the measurement of out-of-home media exposure and conversion?

  That's what research firm IMMI is betting on. Today at the ARF's Audience Measurement 2.0 conference, the company's co-founder Amanda Welsh, walked us through a new product that will debut this fall.

  Here's how it works: An audience panel's mobile phones are pinged for a 10 second duration every 30 seconds (these durations can be varied). The ambient sounds of whatever setting they're in are monitored. If OOH advertising audio is detected (radio, TV or closed network systems), these sounds are matched to the corresponding ads. Additionally, a small device called a beacon is plugged in next to the TV the panelist uses most often to monitor their viewing habits. IMMI can track not only ad exposure, but also take a stab at coming up with conversion figures. In tests, the company claims panelists exposed to ads for the movie "300" converted at a rate of 9 percent, for example, while non-exposed conversion was c. 2 percent.

  The pings pick up other data as well, such as the phone's battery level, and even whether or not it's plugged into a charger.

  Interesting...and, of course, flawed. Overall, I'm betting men, who tend to carry mobile devices in pockets and on belts, would be imminently more trackable than women, who are more inclined to bury the thing in a handbag. Depending on the size of a panelists home, would a charging device be within range of the beacon? What if a family member's watching the set, but not the actual panelist? What about lost and left-behind cell phones? There are a myriad of variables that could skew the data. Or is the answer that at least it's better than nothing?

  Interesting solution to a complex problem. We'll be following up with more on the topic.

  Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  June 25, 2007

  Web Analytics - Buy the Book!

  Hope you've got the budget for at least two books on Web analytics this summer because another must-read title was just released by Shane Atchison and Jason Burby, who respectively pen ClickZ's Actionable Analysis and Analyzing Customer Data columns.

  Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions is the name of the new tome, and it's been getting raves from anyone who's anyone in Web metrics (Lester Wunderman, Jim Sterne, Eric Petersen and Avinash Kaushik, to name just a few).

  Here's the blurb I supplied to endorse the title:

  "If you’re one of the many people who view Web analytics as a necessary evil, this book will spin your perception 180 degrees. That Jason and Shane know Web analytics backward and forward (not to mention upside-down and inside-out) is a well-known fact. But these two possess another singular talent: the ability to make analytics palatable, understandable, even digestible for even the most data- and math-adverse right-brain thinker you know (perhaps you’re that person?). These two go way beyond the numbers. They can explain with crystal clarity how to use data to improve processes, businesses, and their bottom lines."

  Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  June 20, 2007

  Nielsen TV Panel Leery of Web Tracking Plans

  So, Nielsen wants to track the online activities of the folks on its TV household panel. In fact, they'd like to make it mandatory. Evidently, they aren't taking well to the notion. A Mediapost report notes, "results from a small test sample of the so-called 'convergence panel' indicate that a significant number of respondents have refused to add Internet measurement due to concerns about their privacy." The firm, merging officially with its online firm NetRatings soon, may begin testing the online measurement with its live panel homes this fall.

  Considering the clamor for cross-media tracking and reporting, it makes perfect sense that Nielsen wants to do this. Whether they can convince their traditional TV panelists to let 'em is another story.

  Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  June 19, 2007

  Further In-Game Ad Research Underway

  There's been studies, forecasts, and controversy over measurement of in-game advertising. IGA Worldwide said it will underwrite what it calls "an intensive U.S. study of the effectiveness of in-game advertising." The research will be conducted by BASES/Nielsen Entertainment. Partners include Electronic Arts and Activision on the video game side, and Omnicom's Organic and PHD units on the agency side. EA and Activision games will be used to conduct the research.

  IGA outlined the objectives:
  

  • To support in-game advertising opportunities.
    
  • To deliver new insights between brands, consumers, and the medium.
    

  While any research in the space will benefit the medium, it's not the first, and it won't be the last. A recent eMarketer forecast puts at $502 million for this year, and says U.S. video game advertising spending could reach $969 million by 2011. Double Fusion conducted research a few years ago on recall of ads seen in games. Research will be conducted in June, and results are expected to be available in August.

  Posted by Enid Burns at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  June 15, 2007

  Come to Grips with Web Analytics (& Do Good in the Process!)

  Here's a recommedation for all you multitaskers out there: get a grip on Web analytics and help save the world in the process.

  No, it's as far-fetched as you might think.

  Avinash Kaushik is one of the acknowledged gurus in the Web analytics space (who recently became a consultant for Google). His book, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, just published. Aside from the many strong business arguments to invest in a copy, 100% of the proceeds from sales will be donated to two charities: The Smile Train and Doctors Without Borders.

  Avinash, a first-time author, shrugs off his generosity. "My wife and I have enought money to live on without my writing this book," he told me.

  Do something good for your business and your world -- pick up a copy.

  Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  May 22, 2007

  GSM's Ad Standards Committee

  The GSM Association (GSMA) made a official announcement about the formation of its Mobile Media and Entertainment Group, to promote common standards, measurement and codes of conduct for mobile advertising. Details of the group were discussed at a summit held in April. Founding members of the group include AT&T (formerly Cingular Wireless), 3, KTF, Orange, Smart Communications, T-Mobile, and Telefonica O2 Europe. More information on the committee can be found here.

  Posted by Enid Burns at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  May 17, 2007

  Comscore Agrees to MRC Audit, Too

  Well, Nielsen/NetRatings may have put out a press release today touting the fact that they've agreed to a full Media Rating Council audit of their measurement methodology, but it turns out Comscore has also agreed to an MRC audit, according to a company spokesperson.

  Yesterday the initial "summit" hosted by (and initiated -- perhaps almost demanded -- by) the Internet Advertising Bureau took place. During the meeting, Nielsen/NetRatings apparently officially announced it will go through the Media Rating Council audit of its measurement methodology. The company's already completed the pre-audit phase (i.e., the MRC has assessed their system and told them what they need to change before they tackle the actual audit).

  The Comscore spokesperson told me "more information will be forthcoming" in a planned joint announcement (possibly from the IAB, NetRatings, and the likely advertiser organizations). Comscore's currently in the pre-audit phase with the MRC.

  Oh, and on the gossip tip: The inference I've made from all this is these groups agreed to do a joint announcement, but NetRatings jumped the gun to do their own. Just a hunch.

  Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  May 11, 2007

  Participate in the Blog Reader Project

  
  The Blog Reader Project is conducting a survey of blog readership, media consumption and demographics of visitors participating blogs. ClickZ is participating and would like you, our readers, to please take our blog reader survey!

  Posted by Enid Burns at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  May 10, 2007

  IAB Wants Opinions on Rich App Guidelines

  The IAB has offered up proposed guidelines for measuring rich Internet applications and ads served within those increasingly popular environments. It's all about getting a head start on replacing the pageview metric, which could become obsolete as more and more publishers integrate AJAX to dynamically-update page content.

  The IAB wants you to chime in. There's a 30-day public comment period, so you'll have to get your two cents in by sometime mid-June. Here's the PDF document featuring the full proposed guidelines.

  Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  April 24, 2007

  New Hot Topic for Our Web Metrics Conference

  Face-to-face. It's a good idea sometimes.

  I just ran into IAB SVP and General Manager Sheryl Draizen and realized that with that body's recent call-to-action on the Web metrics front, we had to have her speak at our Web Metrics conference in New York next week. I asked, she accepted, and we've added a new session entitled "A New Era of Measurement Transparency" (I can get it on this blog faster than it will take to get it on the event site).

  Sheryl will discuss why the IAB just issued a call for audience measurement to adhere to newer and stricter standards, such as independent audits, accreditation and non-panel based measurement. This is one of the burning topics in the industry right now. Should provide for some pretty fascinating discussion on May 2 at the NY Hilton.

  Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  April 23, 2007

  Win a Pass to ClickZ Specifics: Web Metrics in NYC on May 2

  On the Web, everything is measurable. The trick is knowing what to measure -- and how to measure it.

  Web metrics is an enormous, constantly evolving challenge for many marketers. ClickZ Specifics: Web Metrics is an intensive, one-day conference we're holding in New York City on May 2 to help interactive marketers come to grips with, and make intelligent, informed decisions, about this often prickly topic. We have a great line-up of speakers for the event, including many of our own columnists on the topic.

  And, we're offering one free ticket to a reader of this blog. Just e-mail your name, affiliation and full contact information to: raffle [at] incisivemedia.com by 5:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday, April 25. We'll pick one entry at random (and, of course, protect the personal information and privacy of all entrants).

  Good luck -- and look forward to seeing you at the event!

  Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  April 20, 2007

  IAB Takes ComScore and NetRatings to Task -- Full Letter Here

  So, today IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg threw down the gauntlet, challenging his counterparts at online measurement firms ComScore and Nielsen/NetRatings to draw back the curtains on their otherwise opaque methodologies. Here's the full text of the open letter. Read our ClickZ News coverage for the full story. As of yet, neither ComScore nor Nielsen/NetRatings has responded.
  
  Interactive Advertising Bureau
  Randall Rothenberg
  President & CEO
  (212) 380-4717
  randall@iab.net

  April 19, 2007

  Magid M. Abraham, President & CEO
  comScore, Inc.
  11465 Sunset Hills Road
  Suite 200
  Reston, VA 20190

  William Pulver, President & CEO
  Nielsen//NetRatings
  120 West 45th St., 35th Fl.
  New York, NY 10036

  Dear Dr. Abraham and Mr. Pulver:

  On behalf of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, I would like to invite you to a summit meeting with the IAB's Board of Directors on interactive audience measurement. We haven't scheduled this meeting; we are willing to hold it at any time and any place that is convenient for you both. But we would like to convene it as soon as possible, because the matter is urgent: the ability of digital media – which is to say all media – to achieve our customers' goal of true accountability.

  At this summit – if not before -- we are seeking your agreement to a near-term timetable for independent audits and accreditations of your companies' interactive-audience measurement processes. We also hope to open a dialogue with you about assuring the integrity of audience measurement systems and processes as interactive technologies continue to evolve.

  In taking leadership of the IAB after seven years at a global management consulting firm, I wasn't surprised to learn that some of the issues I once covered as a media and marketing reporter still are front-and-center for our extended industry. Buyers, sellers, intermediaries and service providers always will debate why people buy, what engages them and how, and the power of brand versus price, among other topics. But I was rather startled to discover that one issue the Internet was built to resolve remains a burning platform, 70 years after marketers and media companies first lit the match. That issue is audience measurement.

  The promise of the Internet has always been its ability to tell, to a high degree of certitude, how many people are coming to, perusing, and engaging with a media outlet. After decades of media research methodologies premised on early 20th century innovations in statistical sampling of barley yields, we could at last move beyond projections, and into a census-based universe that would let marketers eliminate waste, media companies realize a fair price, and advertising agencies target audiences and analyze their campaigns more effectively.

  To be sure, sample-based research built the media industry as we know it. Our great broadcasters, magazine companies, and newspapers, as well as the giant consumer brands that depended on them to reach audiences, derived from the small panels of Americans who allowed their TV sets to be wired, filled in diaries, or sent prepaid postcards listing their preferences back to the research firms in the Princeton-New York corridor. But an exact count – that was marketing's Holy Grail, and the Internet put it within reach. If you'll forgive me the transgression of quoting myself, I noted the potential in a 1998 Wired magazine article: "The new media technologies, by drastically reducing production and distribution costs and making possible almost continual and instantaneous refinements in message, promise to increase the efficiency of accountable advertising so that its widespread adoption, not as an ancillary medium but as the primary communications choice, becomes inescapable… The spurious distinction between image advertising and retail advertising will erode, then disappear, as each advertisement, every product placement, all editorial can be tied to transactions."

  Imagine my surprise when I came to the IAB and discovered that the main audience measurement companies are still relying on panels – a media-measurement technique invented for the radio industry exactly seven decades ago – to quantify the Internet.

  As the son of a lifelong researcher (a former head of the New York chapter of the American Marketing Association), I am sophisticated enough to know that panel methodologies will remain important. Still, it is incumbent on all of us in the marketing-media value chain to come as close as we can to the ideal of true accountability. To continue to close the gap between sample and census requires dialogue, collaboration, and auditing according to a set of independent, transparent standards.

  By reaching for the goal of true accountability, we can help marketers unlock their own growth potential. The era of mass media (and mass-media measurement methodologies) excluded populations that appeared too difficult to reach, or too cost-ineffective for main media to count – hence, the battles that have waged for years between media and research companies over the dilemma of counting college students, men in bars, out-of-home Mom's, ethnic minorities, or adults at work. The glory of interactive media is they make it easy to assemble, count, and assess the marketing value of these and myriad other niche populations – and aggregate these niche populations into effective and efficient media plans. To persist in using panels that undercount or ignore the diverse populations that are the future of consumer marketing is to deny marketers the insights they need to build their businesses. And it certainly appears to us as if they are being undercounted or disregarded, for our members’ server logs continue to diverge starkly from your companies' sample-based assessments, by 2x to 3x magnitudes in some cases – far beyond any legitimate margin of sampling error.

  We in the marketing-media ecosystem have spent too many years trying to clean up the residue of flawed media-research methodologies. We simply cannot let the Internet, the most accountable medium ever invented, fall into the same bad customs that have hindered older media and angered advertisers for decades – customs such as inadequate samples, accepted out of begrudging convenience; or phantom metrics, like "pass-along readers," that add shadowy bulk to audiences that cannot be measured directly; or metering technologies and processes that are easy to game.

  The media companies that comprise the IAB represent some 86% of all interactive advertising spend in the United States. We are a diverse group – portals and branded publishers, ad-networks and games-networks, mobile specialists and blogs, newspaper-founded companies and television-founded companies – but we have in common a commitment to accountability and transparency. Discrepancies as wide as the ones we are seeing are unacceptable to us, and they should be unacceptable to you and your teams.

  The IAB is not asking that you accept our members’ exact counts. Rather, we want your companies to participate in an open process aimed at creating – forgive the mixed metaphor – a solid and transparent foundation for audience measurement in the 21st Century. So committed is the IAB to the establishment of fact-based interactive-media accountability that we have delegated oversight of interactive media metrics to the one independent body chartered by the U.S. Congress to steward media measurement: The Media Rating Council.

  As you know, the MRC was established by Congress in the early 1960s to oversee the establishment and administration of minimum standards for rating operations; the accreditation of rating services on the basis of information submitted by such services; and auditing, through independent CPA firms, of the activities of the rating services. With the MRC, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has developed guidelines for counting ad impressions. Together, we also have developed procedures for the auditing of advertising technologies and processes used by interactive media companies, agencies and third parties. Many of the largest marketers in the United States – including BMW, Colgate-Palmolive, Ford Motor Company, HP, ING, Kimberly-Clark, Pepsi and Visa – have said they will require the interactive media companies on which they advertise to provide audited numbers in 2007, and certified numbers in 2008.

  The IAB believes this request for trustworthy metrics is good for the entire marketing-media value chain. To this end, we have asked several times for comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings to agree to audits of your audience measurement processes. Both your companies' reports have a material impact on interactive marketing and media decision-making; transparency into your methodologies is critical to maintaining advertisers' confidence in interactive media, particularly now, as marketers allocate more budget to interactive venues. Every major advertising medium receives audited numbers from its key measurement suppliers – but not interactive. Although I understand you have agreed to be audited, I'm not aware that any timetables have been set. The platform is still burning.

  You can help us put out that fire. I know from my work at Booz Allen Hamilton, which included three years of research in collaboration with the Association of National Advertisers, that senior marketers are now not just paying deep attention to interactive media, but are poised to allocate significant budgets to interactive marketing campaigns. They are attracted by the deep engagement interactive media provide, and the true accountability we can offer. But these same senior marketers will look with disdain at any effort to subvert that promise. Your own growth, as well as that of our member media companies, our agency partners, and the marketers we serve, will depend on providing fact-based audience measurement.

  So please join the IAB's Board, the MRC, and other representatives of the marketing, media and advertising industries whom we might collectively engage, in a summit meeting on audience measurement. All we ask for is a timetable by which your companies and ours can create the audience measurement infrastructure the marketplace is now demanding.

  As do you, I revere the researchers who helped create the modern marketing and media industries, many of whom I had the pleasure to meet, and even befriend – people like Frank Stanton and Leo Bogart. Let us honor their memories by building the accountable media measurement system for which they strove.

  Sincerely,
  Randall Rothenberg
  President & CEO

  cc: O. Burtch Drake, President & CEO, American Association of Advertising Agencies
  George Ivie, Executive Director & CEO, Media Ratings Council
  Robert Liodice, President & CEO, Association of National Advertisers

  Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  April 19, 2007

  Continued Rise in Click Fraud Rates

  Click fraud rates reached 14.8 percent in Q1, according to data from Click Forensics. The first quarter in 2006 saw click fraud rates of 13.7 percent. Search engine content networks reached click fraud rates of 21.9 percent, versus 19.2 percent in the last quarter of 2006. High-priced search terms suffered at 22.2 percent, compared to 20.9 percent in Q4 06. While rates are up, Google and Yahoo are exhibiting more transparency on the issue.

  Posted by Enid Burns at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  April 9, 2007

  Google Canvasses Students on E-Mail Habits

  Google's asking university students to tell them their thoughts on campus e-mail.

  The survey asks students about their e-mail habits and preferences, as well as poses questions about usage of other online applications.

  "Since e-mail is such a vital tool for managing academic careers – used to coordinate study groups, organize campus activities, or communicate directly with their professors – this generation of college students includes some of the most knowledgeable consumers of online applications ever," said Jeff Keltner, Google manager of collaboration products for education, in a statement.

  Looks like the search giant, which we all know is about to become an online-tool giant (think docs, spreadsheets, calendars, Gmail, etc.) is doing some in-depth research with a tech savvy, early adopter audience.

  Hope they share the results.

  Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  February 26, 2007

  Panama Projects Up

  Since the release of Yahoo's advertising system, Panama Project, there's been a nice lift in click-through rates. The first week saw a 5 percent increase, and 9 percent the following week. That's according to data released by comScore. Search Engine Watch has a few more details.

  Posted by Enid Burns at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  TNS Acquired Listening, Tracking Service

  TNS Media Intelligence, the media tracking firm that provides the "Top 50 Advertisers by Media Value" each month, has acquired Cymfony, which has experience measuring traditional and social media research and analysis. Both parties agree the services will be complimentary, "When you start to combine consumer sentiment with ad spend, you're getting a much clearer perspective," said Steven Fredericks, president and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence. He said advertisers will be better advised on where to place, or shift, their dollars on campaigns.

  "This is a validation of the social media space; it also says a lot of the overall space: Social media is not going away and has a huge impact," said Andrew Bernstein, CEO at Cymfony.

  Posted by Enid Burns at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  February 9, 2007

  The Most Measurable Medium? Yeah, Keep Telling Yourself That

  The foundation of Web advertising -- measurability -- is showing cracks, and not the plumber's kind. Marketers, agencies and site owners have lashed out at panel-based audience measurement, third-party trafficking platforms, and cookies. Also, AJAX-y sites have caused page views to be under-reported. Indeed, the page view metric is thought by many to be seriously ailing.

  A new survey from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is the first research I'm aware of that directly asks advertisers how much faith they have in the accuracy of their online ad reports. The answer? Not very much.

  According to ABC, under half of agency respondents and only a third of advertiser respondents said they were "confident" or "very confident" in their current metrics. When asked if they trust metrics provided by publishers, only 48 percent of advertisers and 43 percent of agencies said they either "trust" or "strongly trust" the reported data. And when asked if they suspect they're paying for undelivered ad impressions, 56 percent of advertisers and 58 percent of agencies said, yes, they either "suspect" or "strongly suspect" that they do.

  The young are less questioning than the old. Fifty-eight percent of marketers under 25 expressed confidence in their metrics, compared with 22 percent of those aged 55 to 64. Seventy-five percent of young'uns trust sites' self-reported stats, compared with that same 22 percent of fogies.

  The ABC, a non-profit association of publishers and advertisers, is pushing for independent auditing of sites in conjunction with the IAB.

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  January 16, 2007

  Quantcast Launches Keyword Research Tool

  Web site ratings service Quantcast has introduced a keyword research feature to help media planners identify new marketing opportunities beginning with a single search term. Called "keyword profiles," the new tool uses panel-based data to link popular keywords to associated search terms and Web sites. Marketers can also see data on a keyword's volume, popularity and demographic characteristics.

  The tool has other bells and whistles, including turning up the "most differentiated keywords" visitors to the same sites use when conducting searches, CEO Konrad Feldman told me. In a blog post, he offered the keyword profile for NASCAR as an example. Many keywords I tried turn up warnings about data too scarce to be reliable, so the feature clearly has a long way to go.

  Quantcast launched three months ago to offer traffic and demographic data on millions of sites in a free, searchable interface. See ClickZ's earlier coverage here.

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

  January 15, 2007

  Confirmation on Gatineau

  News about Microsoft's free Web analytics product was frequently mentioned last week. ClickZ won't be the first to get Microsoft to talk openly about the service, at least not at this point, but we did get a statement from Alexandra Tibbetts, Microsoft adCenter director of product management. "Microsoft is making significant investments to make Web analytics broadly available to help customers improve the customer experience on their Web sites and optimize the performance marketing campaigns. Microsoft acquired DeepMetrics in May 2006 and began 'Project Gatineau' to continue investments in this area because it is important to our customers."

  Posted by Enid Burns at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  December 27, 2006

  What Kind of iPod Did Santa Bring You?

  413 percent.

  That's how high traffic to Apple's iTunes site spiked on Christmas Day compared to last Xmas, as new iPod owners clicked to the online store in droves to download audio and video. The Apple Store enjoyed an increase of 110 percent over the last time Santa left white boxes under the tree -- it was the fourth most visited Web site in the Hitwise's retail Index this past Christmas day.

  In rival MP3 player visits, Microsoft's Zune.net site saw 1,030 percent more traffic on Christmas than it did on the prior Monday, but in that period, iPod traffic beat Zune's by a 30:1 margin.

  Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  December 13, 2006

  Is FIM "Bigger" Than Yahoo? No.

  Fox Interactive Media sent an email to journalists and bloggers last night boasting about having achieved biggest-site-on-the-Web status as measured in page views. The data are provided by comScore Media Metrix and cover the month of November.

  Be clear: this does not indicate MySpace and FIM are "biggest" online, whatever that means. Page views are a far from reliable measurement of success for a Web publisher. They fluctuate month to month for any site, and the advent of AJAX site navigation, which Yahoo has embraced in its mail app, reduces their number by not generating a new "view" for every click.

  I prefer reach figures, though it's nice to see them accompanied by "time spent" data.

  The below graph from Compete, showing U.S. unique users, tells a very different story about Yahoo and MySpace's comparative influence.
  
  

  On the other hand, MySpace performs very well in "average time spent." A caveat with this metric is that some people keep a site or application open and in the background for hours, or even overnight.

  

  (charts via Greg Sterling)

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  December 7, 2006

  What Will Next Monday Bring in E-Commerce?

  Cyber Monday a myth? BlueLithium says no. In the wake of debates from several research firms, BlueLithium says it recorded 30 percent higher conversion rates than normal.

  While Monday November 27 arguably had strong conversions if not merely traffic, comScore data shows record online sales for this past Monday, and that's not even the expected peak of the online season. Monday brought in $647 million in online sales, a 26 percent increase over the same day a year ago. The tally for November 1 to December 5 this year is $13.68 billion, a 25 percent spike over last year. Next week we start hitting the shipping boundaries, where online shoppers will have to pay extra for express shipping to make the holiday; will next Monday be even bigger?

  Posted by Enid Burns at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  October 6, 2006

  Web 2.0: Problems of Measurement

  During a shared keynote at WebSideStory’s ActiveInsights event this week, Organic CEO Mark Kingdon and Director of Experience Design John Manoogian discussed the problems of measuring consumer activity and engagement in a decentralized Internet. Organic has developed several client projects that either pull content from user-generated sources, be they blogs, fan sites or Flickr pages, or push content out to those same sources. Both approaches offer measurement challenges.

  In one client deployment, the agency offered Web users RSS feeds consisting of hand-picked links to user content and Flickr photo pages. The feeds could be viewed either on a Web page or an RSS aggregator, which raises the issue of how to know where a person is consuming brand content. “Using AJAX, we were able to overlay measurement over top of these links. RSS feeds don't necessarily get read in a browser. A page view is just a metaphor. There are no pages. There are just files," said Manoogian.

  Organic has also experimented with “content that calls home” in the form of widgets or other decentralized brand experiences that send usage and engagement metrics back to the marketer.

  “You still will have a site, no matter who you are, because you want to have engagement,” said Kingdon. “Increasingly we're seeing a lot of the functionality that used to reside on the Web site appearing in an ad or another place,” like watching a movie trailer in a banner unit or downloading a branded widget. However, Kingdon said, this new reality poses many tracking and reporting problems that have yet to be resolved.

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  October 5, 2006

  MySpace Populated by Elderly and Infirm: comScore

  ComeScore reports this afternoon that MySpace users are suddenly a bunch of codgers. The audience researcher says more than 40 percent of the site's unique visitors are between 35 and 54, and eleven percent are 55-plus. That means the site records roughly the same number of near-retirees as it does kids 12 to 17 (11.9 percent). Other social networking sites profiled include Xanga, Facebook and Friendster, and most reflect similar incursions of the elderly and infirm among their user bases. As you might expect, Facebook draws the largest share of its uniques (34 percent) from the 18-to-24 demo (but almost as many -- 33.5 percent -- come from that persistent 35- to 54-year-old set.)

  Now that just sounds wrong to me, so I called ComScore for an explanation, and was given the following hypotheses: It could be that (a) people are following links to MySpace blogs from other Web sites, or (b) the popularity of MySpace for video has led a number of people to view MySpace videos off-site. These are then recorded as a visit to the network.

  Or -- my own preferred theory -- it could be that forty million boomers all visited the site exactly once to eavesdrop on their kids and maybe see what all the hoopla is about, clicked about aimlessly for a few minutes, unable to discover or understand a thing, then closed the browser in frustration and vowed never to return.

  Whatever the case may be, the only lesson I can draw from this research is that unique visitor counts often don't tell the real story of a site's character and usage at all.

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  October 3, 2006

  NetRatings Continues to Enforce Patents

  Web analytics provider Coremetrics became the fifth company to settle a patent infringement suit filed in May by online research firm NetRatings.

  Coremetrics agreed to license NetRatings' patent portfolio, which claims to cover various aspects of Web analytics technology. Financial details of the agreement were not revealed. Besides Coremetrics, Unica, Omniture, SageMetrics, and Visual Sciences (now owned by WebSideStory) have licensed NetRatings' patents.

  Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  September 18, 2006

  Korean Youths, Internet Addicts

  AsiaMedia is reporting a trial by the Information and Communication Ministry in South Korea to get students to take one day a week off from using the Internet. Apparently students of the country were showing signs of becoming Internet addicts. South Korean youths lack control online and have difficulty living an everyday life. But how many were watching the drama behind Lonelygirl15 unfold on YouTube?

  Initially about 17,000 students in 20 elementary, middle and high schools will be asked to designate a day each week where they'll only use the Internet for learning and homework. Eventually the government wants to roll the restrictions out to 200,000 students across the country, in hopes of raising well-adjusted adults with appropriate online habits. The rest of the world can resume its addiction and find the next online video saga to watch obsessively.

  Posted by Enid Burns at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  Glam.com's Rising Fortunes

  Fashion e-commerce and blogging network Glam.com has entered comScore's top ten ranked women's sites and surpassed many long-term incumbents in the fashion and beauty category, including Vogue's Style.com, iVillage Beauty & Style, InStyle.com and Elle.com. Glam's sites had 2.3 million uniques in July, up from 1.4 million in June and 463,000 in May, according to comScore, and it's global unique users measure 5.3 million.
  
  Four months ago Glam.com entered a deal with Cosmopolitan in which the Hearst magazine would represent some of its graphical advertising. Blogs in the glam network when it launched last year included BagCrazy.blogspot.com, Coquette.blogs.com, SheFinds.com/blog, PopGadget.net, InMyBag.blogspot.com, FashionTribes.typepad.com and TiaWilliams.net/blog.

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  September 13, 2006

  Hitwise Launches Public Data Center

  For all you numbers lovers (and you numbers haters too), Hitwise just unveiled a public data center on its site with snapshots of the most-trafficked sites, top keywords for given categories and a variety of other datapoints. The data is free to "marketers, businesses, bloggers, academics, media and the general public," Hitwise said.

  The offerings include the following:

  -Top 25 Most Visited Websites based on market share of visits
  -Leading Search Engines by volume of searches
  -Top 10 Industry Search Terms from across 20 pre-selected industries, from the more -than 160 industry categories reported on by Hitwise
  -Monthly rotating Online Usage Report from a featured industry
  -Top Four Fast Moving Websites based on market share of visits

  Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  August 28, 2006

  Advertisers Care About More than Forbes.com's Traffic Numbers

  Not dismissing the importance of site traffic to publishers and advertisers, Forbes.com's traffic numbers -- and those of other brand name publishers -- deserve a second look. If you haven't seen it, Forbes.com has been out-ed for touting a Web audience that's greater than comScore Media Metrix pegs it at. According to a New York Times story, while the financial site says its audience reaches over the 15 million mark, in actuality, the measurement firm tracks Forbes and related sites like ForbesAutos.com at 7.3 million unique visitors last month. Apparently, about a million of those visitors are attributable to the autos site, not the financial and business news site. Forbes claims that its internal numbers "still showed about 15 million visitors a month, with ForbesAutos.com accounting for about 2 million of those," according to the story. ComScore switched up its methods for estimating global audiences recently, adding to the confusion.

  Since Web site traffic has been measured, the site publishers themselves have been known to inflate numbers, and use the most flattering third party measurements as their go-to external numbers. In every walk of life, from body weight scales to fuel emission gauges, people, governments and corporate entities alike gravitate towards the measurements that make them look best. It's only natural.

  Just last week I visited with About.com to discuss their big health content push for a story. CEO Scott Meyer made sure I was aware that About's Health and Fitness section gets top traffic scores from Nielsen//NetRatings, which put the section in its top 10 list of health, fitness and nutrition Web destinations in July. For a measurement comparison (which, by the way, the Times story doesn't bother to include when it comes to Forbes.com's numbers), I contacted site traffic measurement firm Hitwise. Far lower than Nielsen, Hitwise placed About's health section at number 592 in its health site traffic rankings in August. Both Hitwise and Nielsen counted WebMD and MSN Health in their top fives -- the rest of the top fives differed.

  My Hitwise contact chalked up the glaring disparity to differing metrics. The fact is that assessing mass amounts of traffic across the ever-ebbing Web is a beast of a task.

  While many believe online site measurement is in serious need of standardization, or at least a little cobweb-clearing (including, as featured in the Times story, Forbes CEO and Interactive Advertising Bureau Chairman James Spanfeller), quantity isn't always what's important to advertisers. This is especially true of the kind of brand advertisers that flock to sites like Forbes.com in the knowledge that they'll reach a select contingent of high-earning, highly-educated consumers there.

  Like Nielsen's TV ratings, site traffic numbers are important primarily when it comes to wooing advertisers. When making initial buying decisions, those advertisers surely consider site traffic. However, what they really care about in the end is ROI. Intel, Samsung, Scottrade and Nasdaq are advertising on Forbes.com because of the quality of its audience. While reach is important for many campaigns, if particular goals are met, those advertisers will probably be back again regardless of where Nielsen puts them in the rankings.

  Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

  August 15, 2006

  Can Coupons Bring Local Businesses Online?

  Google's plan to add printable coupons to its local business listings could be a key in getting mom & pops online. Google's local search is much more valuable with their participation, and partnering with Valpak gives all of those local businesses a reason to update their Google Maps listing.

  It's also a way to ease them into online advertising. If they can see real, trackable results from putting up their coupons on Google, they'll be more willing to spend some money on AdWords.

  Clearly the idea of a printable coupon makes offline conversion more trackable, but could coupons also be a solution for online tracking, to some extent? Google and others are facing challenges from AJAX and other dynamic page-serving technologies. Perhaps offering coupons, to be redeemed at the time of conversion, could be a solution in some cases.

  Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

  July 19, 2006

  Ultramercial Touts Viewing Stats

  Ultramercial just unveiled its stats for Q2 2006, based on campaigns that ran between April 1 and June 30:

• Average viewing time was 49.0 seconds


• Average click-through was 7.0 percent


• Completion rate was 73 percent

Whether or not all those people actually watched the ads intently, or clicked to another browser window while they played, however, is another question, of course.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 10, 2006

The Beeb Loses Viewers, Gains Visitors

The BBC issued its annual report and accounts for 2005/2006 late last week Reuters reported on a few of the details presented at a press conference. The channel's "reach" went down from 86.6 percent to 85.3 percent on the past year. Much of the drop-off is said to be comprised of teens. At the same time, the number of British users visiting the Beeb's Web site increased from 8.7 million average weekly visitors to 12.3 million. When international visitors are taken into account, it averages 24.3 million users visit the site per week, up from 17.3 million.

Through a bit of reorganization which will affect certain jobs and salaries at BBC, it plans to offer delivery of on demand content across television, radio, the Internet and other digital platforms. Can that include availability in the U.S. so I can get my Beeb fill?

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 23, 2006

Product Recommendations: Free Beats Fee

David's right. This whole recomendation-engine thing is mind-boggling.

Amazon's telling me to buy Pink Floyd because I told them I own a lot of VU. Huh? They're convinced my predilection for Patti Smith makes "The Concert for Bangladesh" a must-own (the mind reels). Given the vintage of my tunes, I obviously didn't buy a lot of them on Amazon. But I have been putting their engine to the test by spending way too much time telling Amazon what I already have -- to little avail.

Over at GreenCine, it's much clearer why I get the recomendations I do. But they're still wrong, wrong, wrong.

Why? In a word, segmentation. On-the-fly tagging is much nimbler than baked-in metadata.

I overwhelmingly rent Asian films, primarily Japanse and Korean (OK, I have obscure tastes -- that's why I bailed from Netflix). GreenCine obviously takes this preference for "asian" into consideration as Asian films account for a preponderance of my personal recomendations. But (and this is a very big but), nearly all the recommendations are anime. This completely disregards the fact my rental history consists of zero anime.

I can click "not interested" on anime suggestions until I get calluses, but there's always more where that came from. The engine just doesn't get it. GreenCine segments their anime into no less than 11 subcategories (who knew?), all distinct from a completely separate Animation category. This means one broad and 11 subcategories I've never rented DVDs from constitute about 90 percent of my recommendations -- presumably because of metadata I'm not seeing; "japanese" and "asian" are likely guesses.

It's so much cheaper and so much easier for these e-commerce players to go the CGM route. I love Amazon's customer reviews, lists, and "people who looked at this product actually bought..." links. I've rented a ton of movies off Greencine's excellent, eccentric and often, arcane, user recommendation lists (like Roger Ebert is a Big, Fat, Idiot or Movies that make you want to take a shower).

Building an e-commerce site? Considering a recommendation engine? Save your money. Let your customers do that work for you.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 19, 2006

Search for Brand Marketers Breakfast

This Thursday, I'm participating in a panel on search for brand marketers sponsored by Hitwise. I'll be joining some great speakers: SEMPO's Dana Todd, Performic's Cam Balzer, Spafinders' Daniel Lizio-Katzen and Microsoft's James Colborn, with Bill Tancer moderating.

Stop by for breakfast if you're in sweltering New York this week. I'm sure the hotel will have air con!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 15, 2006

Worldwide Internet Usage Updated

Last week we updated the World Factbook figures in the Web Worldwide data in Stats. Included are updated numbers for population, Internet users and ISPs for each country.

Posted by Enid Burns at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 5, 2006

One Dust Mite. One.

From the Bureau of Good Schwag comes this promotion from Achoo Allergy & Air Products: One dust mite.

Just one.

It's a spring allergy season gift-with-purchase for customers who buy anti-allergy bedding products this month. A mattress can house up to 10 million of the critters, warns the press release, and double in weight every 10 years due to infestations.

We'll take our dust mites stuffed, five inches long, and one at a time, please. And every time we see it we'll fondly recall the brand, just as we do Small Dog Electronics and the cute little plastic pups they send with every order.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 4, 2006

Omniture IPO

Analytics firm Omniture has filed for a $120 million initial public offering. And it isn't even profitable. In 2005, the firm brought in $42.8 million in revenues, for a loss of $17.4 million.

The filing contains a few tidbits on Omniture's settlement of a patent lawsuit filed by NetRatings.

In February 2006, we entered into a settlement and patent license agreement with NetRatings, Inc. The agreement requires us to make license payments of $10.0 million, $1.5 million of which we have previously paid and the balance of which is payable in quarterly installments of $1.5 million in 2006 and of $1.0 million in 2007. In addition, we will be required to make a license payment of $4.0 million following the closing of this offering. In the event that we acquire certain specified companies, we may be required to make additional license payments based on the web analytics revenues of the acquired company.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 29, 2006

JupiterResearch Sold to Kagan

Jupitermedia's JupiterResearch unit, for many years a fount of Internet data and analysis, has been sold to media and TV researcher Kagan Research. The combined company will operate under the name JupiterKagan, and offer both syndicated and custom research, as well as consulting and appraisal services.

It's the second time the storied research and consulting entity has been married off since it first pierced the rarified bubble-era atmosphere with several high-flying online ad and retail forecasts. It was originally part of Jupiter Media Metrix, which fell on hard times around mid-2000 as one after another of its dot-com clients bit the dust. Between 2000 and 2002 JMM sold off all its assets. The research group was the last to go at about the exact moment the Internet economy hit bottom and started its long upward climb. Alan Meckler's INT Media Group acquired it for less than a song -- $250,000 -- and then took on its name.

This time around JupiterResearch fetched a much more respectable $10.1 million. Here's Jupiter SVP of Research David Schatsky in his official blog post on the deal: "The rationale for the merger is pretty simple: combine our complementary assets and build a bigger, more influential research and consulting powerhouse that can advise clients at every phase of the media and technology lifecycle, from appraising a deal to programming content in a multi-platform digital world."

Full disclosure: ClickZ was previously owned by Jupitermedia, and will continue to be partially operated by the company during this calendar year. Jupitermedia is steadily morphing into a stock images business, and has used most of the cash from its divestitures to buy new stock photo providers.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 27, 2006

Research Bits

A few interesting stats came out today that we'll just touch on briefly here.



• TNS Media Intelligence: "Internet display advertising registered the largest gain [in 2005], up 13.3 percent to $8.3 billion on the strength of accelerated spending from dot-com brands. For the year, these online brands accounted for 49.7 percent of total internet expenditures, the highest level since the dot-com bust." Across media, advertising advanced to $143.3 billion, up 3 percent compared to 2004.
  
• JupiterResearch: 40% of search marketers use only Google and/or Yahoo! for their campaigns. "Even though search engine usage by marketers has broadened in the past couple of years, marketers are still slow to test the newer search providers," said Sapna Satagopan, Research Associate at JupiterResearch. "Lack of management tools and relatively low traffic volume are the biggest deterrents."
  

Interesting tidbits, both.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

Debunking the Da Vinci Code

What with the movie version of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" upcoming, the Catholics are putting up their dukes to fight against the ideas expounded in the movie... online. In its efforts to debunk various tenets mentioned in the movie, the Coalition of Catholics has launched a site, DaVinciOutreach.com, to fact check the flick. Or, as the press release puts it: "to help readers and moviegoers navigate their way through the web of bogus history and outright lies conjured up by Dan Brown and brought to life by Imagine Entertainment and Sony Pictures."

If that last bit actually sounds like marketing for the movie, you might also want to check out thedavincichallenge.com, a site set up by the movie's marketers to give critics a voice. (According to the NY Times.)Maybe Outreach is cut from the same cloth?

Posted by Pamela Parker at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 21, 2006

Olympic-Sized Traffic

NBC released some tidbits about how its multi-platform strategy is panning out. A few items about NBCOlympics.com:



• Record number of page views (232 million) in the first week, surpassing the total number from the entirety of the Salt Lake Olympics with 11 days remaining in the Torino Games.
  
• 5.9 million video streams, which equates to more than 67,000 hours of video watched through Saturday.
  

Randy Falco, President and COO, NBC Universal Network Television Group, said:

Our multi-platform strategy is working. The plan coming into the Games was to use all of our platforms to aggregate the largest possible audience. In a media landscape that is constantly fragmenting even further, we are reassembling the audience. We continue to expand our audience, reaching them everywhere they consume media, in different dayparts, on cable and online. We're in the viewership business -- that's what we sell -- and we are succeeding in increasing our viewership across the platforms.

NBC Universal has gotten slammed for lackluster coverage and TV ratings. Does NBC's coverage really suck, or is it just difficult to measure multi-platform media? Maybe both are true.

EXTRA: Check out traffic numbers from 2002 in Salt Lake.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 7:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 15, 2006

Blog-Specific Metrics at Google

Apparently, Google Analytics isn't enough. The company's gone and acquired Measure Map, a blog measurement company that's not even had a public beta.

If Google follows its usual pattern, it'll end up offering this one for free (in beta for a year or so), in hopes of making content across the Web better, and therefore making everyone's lives better. If I was being practical, however, I'd say tools like this might help AdSense publishers, many of them bloggers, increase their pageviews (aka ad impressions delivered for Google). Measure Map appears to be better suited to that task (helping blog/media ventures) than Google Analytics, which is more e-commerce oriented.

It's certainly a time -- with the launch of Yahoo! Publisher Network and the potential for an MSN publisher network looming -- when Google must do everything it can to keep its army of publishers happy.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dream Home = Dream Traffic for HGTV.com

HGTV's fourth annual dream home giveaway, with a strong Web component, drove record traffic to HGTV.com.

"The HGTV Dream Home Giveaway is so popular that for the month of January we had 22 days of more than 1 million sweepstakes entries per day on HGTV.com...according to January's Nielsen//NetRatings, the site's average time spent more than doubled and its unique users increased 100 percent versus the average for the previous three months," said Ron Feinbaum, SVP and GM for Scripps Networks' interactive group.

January was HGTV.com's best traffic month ever with 334 million page views, up 22 percent from the same month a year ago. Unique visitors were also up to a record 9.3 million.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 7, 2006

Spider/Bot Chase Goes Trans-Continental

It's a global problem, so I guess it's a positive development that the trade orgs are at least teaming up across the pond. The IAB and ABC ELECTRONIC (ABCE), which respresents the UK and Ireland, have joined for the first time to pool their resources on spiders and bots.

The idea is that together, they can help sites, ad servers and measurement companies filter out known non-human sources of traffic. Now how about something similar for click fraud?

Posted by Pamela Parker at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 23, 2006

100% of Pop-Up Vendors Finds Pop-Ups Effective

OK, VitalStream isn't a pop-up vendor, but I find the press release the company issued today pretty darn misleading.

The headline is "Pop-Up Ads Worth the Price For Free Content." It makes no illusion to pop-up blockers, a de facto part of users' software arsenal and the default setting of new browser releases. And the copy goes on to make some sneaky and suspicious jumps, such as:

"Web site distractions are actually quite effective, with over one-third, or 37 percent, of respondents admitting that they have purchased a product or service online because of an Internet ad."

Isn't a a bit of a leap to infer all online ads distract in the same manner as pop-ups do?

When Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink, Netscape and Firefox (for starters) bake in pop-up blockers, and tout the fact in marketing campaigns, there's gotta be a problem with research reports such as this one. The thrust is consumers don't mind pop-ups if they can still get content for free. I'm guessing they're not getting the pop-ups in the first place.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 13, 2006

BizWeek on Math

Interesting piece in BusinessWeek.com about the role math now plays in modern business -- including online advertising, natch.

A little excerpt about Imran Khan, the director of search advertising at E-Loan:



An accountant by training, Khan has turned the advertising operation into an enormous statistical laboratory. Like most others in the industry, he started three years ago by bidding on keywords on the major search engines. Over time, Khan's team has amassed a portfolio of 250,000 key words and phrases. Each time a Web surfer types one of those words in a search engine, an E-Loan ad appears next to the results, and Khan's team pays the price bid for each click. But running search-based ads is hardly a static process. Working with Efficient Frontier Inc., an analytics startup in Silicon Valley, Khan crunches his stash of words, calculating the return on investment for each one and tweaking thousands of bids hour by hour. He spends $15 million a year -- half of E-Loan's ad budget -- and he accumulates massive feedback from customers.


Posted by Pamela Parker at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 30, 2005

Cookies. Scary, Scary Cookies.

First the story was BoingBoinged. Now, mainstream media has picked up the story about how the White House is using cookies on its Web site.

"Unbeknown to the Bush administration, an outside contractor has been using Internet tracking technologies that may be prohibited to analyze usage and traffic patterns at the White House's Web site, an official said Thursday," reads the alarmist AP story.

This is not good, people. Personal data are not involved.

The industry is going to have to redouble its cookie PR efforts in the coming year to fight ignorant broadsides such as this one.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 9, 2005

Chronicles of Narnia, a Family Affair

If you're going to see "Chronicles of Narnia" this weekend, it's going to be very crowded. Fandango reports ticket sales for the movie account for 82 percent of tickets sold on the site this week.

Audiences viewing "Narnia" are likely families or at least small groups, the average quantity of a ticket order on the site is four. A Fandango site poll finds 79 percent of moviegoers picked the film as the most anticipated family film of the holiday season.

Other cinematic picks are clearing a significantly smaller percentage of orders. Ticket buys for "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire are down to four percent. The movie has been in theaters since November 18. Other new and upcoming releases attract viewers. "King Kong" (December 14) , "Syriana"(December 9) and "Brokeback Mountain" (December 9) each account for two percent of sales on Fandango for the week.

Posted by Enid Burns at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 9, 2005

Cookie Crumbs

JupiterResearch released a report about cookies. It focused primarily on third-party cookies; migration to first-party cookies and how anti-spyware firms handle cookies. What's not there is how first-party cookies are handled from a consumer and anti-spyware standpoint.

As long as there are third-party cookies in use--and to the extent these cookies are seen as spyware targets--research firms can justifiably conduct research and alarm the industry. However, the next logical step should be a look at first-party cookies.

Will anti-spyware firms heavily-target first-party cookies if there's no more third-party cookies to populate the found-threats list on an anti-spyware sweep? Will bad actors find a way to use first-party cookies and justify action from anti-spyware firms?

Here's to the next wave of research and reaction on the cookie front.

Posted by Enid Burns at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 4, 2005

Word of Mouth Analysis

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) commissioned a report that looks at many aspects of the practice. The findings may help standardize the implementation and measurement of word-of-mouth implementation and measurement.

"WOMMA's Terminology Framework begins to align all this different sources of data, so word of mouth can be measured accurately," said Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Word of Mouth marketing Association. "We're measuring it now, but WOMMA standards synchronize the terminology. That helps marketer understand the role of WOM and put it into a media plan.

In other news, WOMMA also stared a blog, "Word of Mouth Basic Training." It is an extension of the organization's upcoming conference and will contain many "How To" articles.

Posted by Enid Burns at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 19, 2005

A media planning tool for mid-tier sites

I/PRO rolled out a free tool for media planners, a la Nielsen//NetRatings @Plan and ComScore Media Metrix. Called SpotSite, it gives info on audience size and impression volume for any site that's audited by I/PRO, along with demographic/psychographic data.

It's not trying to compete directly with the tools listed above, but is rather geared toward "the fat part of the long tail," CTO Chris Butler told me.

"They have very strong reach to the top 40, top 70 Web sites," he said. "We have a very small handful of those sites," but lots and lots of mid-tier sites that aren't effectively measured by panel-based systems.

Butler said the directory contains five billion impressions now, which number will rise to 60 billion by year end. (link to press release)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 8, 2005

Measuring Search

According to a new study from SEM firm iProspect, most companies engaged in search marketing are not measuring it right.

Of course it's a bit self-serving for an SEM firm to put out research to highlight the business value of SEM and ultimately convince people to spend more on it, but that doesn't necessarily make it any less relevant.

I'm curious to hear from search marketers about the way SEM is looked at in their company -- is it seen as a device to drive clickthroughs, or as a core part of the marketing plan? Do you think the way you're measuring results now justifies your budget?

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 23, 2005

A Step Toward Podcast Measurement

A little while back, our Kevin Newcomb chronicled advertisers' thoughts on the difficulty of measuring that much-talked-about format, the podcast. Today, Arbitron says its Portable People Meter -- which is eventually supposed to track just about everything -- has successfully tracked podcasts.

To perform the test, Arbitron downloaded several podcasts (from a station owned by Clear Channel, which has been experimenting with podcasting) from the Apple iTunes Music Store. They were then transferred to an MP3 player and played on a headset. The Portable People Meter -- using its headset adapter -- detected the unique digital codes embedded in the podcast file.

Says Pierre Bouvard, president of Portable People Meters at Arbitron: "The state-of-the-art encoding system used in the PPM does a better job of identifying alternate distribution platforms and time-shifted audio content than any other approach to portable electronic audience measurement that we've seen."

Interesting stuff. Still a lot of challenges -- like getting people to use those headset adapters and gaining the confidence of the industry -- but the announcement certainly shows that the idea of podcasts, at least, is gaining serious momentum.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

August 1, 2005

Are Offline Agencies Feeling Online Pressure?

Interpublic's new Marketing Accountability Partnership (MAP) will focus on bringing accountability and ROI to marketing initiatives across IPG's various units.

When clients are demanding the same analytics capabilities offline as they're getting online, it's just one more example of how the lines between online and offline marketing are blurring, with marketers looking at their marketing campaigns as a whole instead of in distinct silos.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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