Future Steps for Online Audience Measurement
February 10 2003
At the request of ESOMAR and ARF, an assessment on standards of performance for online measurement was recently carried out, focusing on identifying requirements for the next stages of development.
In September 2002, ARF and ESOMAR announced that they would set up an exploratory investigation with respect to standards of performance for online measurement and analysis. The aim was to assess the state-of-the-art and to identify research requirements for the next stages in development in the short term.
The documents which have been produced are all fairly basic, but they do reflect current industry practice, having been discussed with a fairly broad cross-section of users and providers of online data. However, there has been no global, or even regional, acceptance of these guidelines by the advertising and publishing industry. At present each national market is producing its own guidelines and standards and, although they are all fairly similar, there is no harmonization of activity which will lead to the creation of consistent international standards. An international initiative is needed which can negotiate with national organisations to harmonise their national guidelines with the international proposals. Also, nothing has yet been done to include Asia or Latin America in any of this work.
The detailed administration, implementation and auditing of standards in online audience measurement has to happen at a national level, just as with more traditional media, but the standards and processes need to be internationally consistent, if the data is to be of any use. If anyone doubts this, it should be noted that international traffic on many major websites is a significant proportion of all visits and global advertisers increasingly use servers based outside the country to supply advertising and content for national websites.
There is a need for an international effort to produce and promote independent guidelines for currencies and ultimately planning tools for this new medium. There appears to be considerable international support for an initiative to develop such tools. ESOMAR, the ARF and in principle, the WFA, have agreed to facilitate this development. Specific terms of reference have still to be agreed in more detail.
There are at least four stages in the development of guidelines which will be effective.
- Obtain agreement in principle from all major stakeholders to support the initiative and implement guidelines which are produced. (ownership)
- Set up a technical committee to develop guidelines (technical expertise)
- Circulate the guidelines for consultation to the national and international bodies and get agreement on key definitions and measurements (consensus)
- Publicise the guidelines and encourage national and international stakeholders to get their members to implement them (communication).
Quite a lot of initial groundwork on the first point has already been carried out by ARF in the US and FAST Europe in Europe. This needs to be consolidated with a firm proposal but, at the international level, there will be support from most organisations. However, the national politics are much more difficult and the commitment and active support of major international advertisers is essential if cooperation is to be obtained from national organisations. As far as the second point is concerned, a considerable amount of work has been carried out in Europe, and possibly also in the US. It should be quite feasible for an international technical committee to produce a work programme and some sensible basic guidelines for international discussion in six months and a comprehensive set in twelve months. The third point is probably the most difficult area. It is here that the co-operation of the major global data suppliers and advertisers will be helpful, since they should be able to apply definitions and procedures globally once they have been agreed by the major national associations relevant to this market. In terms of the final point, ESOMAR and the ARF can do a lot, but it should be part of the commitment process at stage one that organisations that support the initiative agree to publicise the guidelines and impose their use on their members. If this is not accepted at the beginning of the process, the chances of success are poor.
It is now proposed that ESOMAR and ARF in cooperation with the WFA set up a meeting with a small group of key international stakeholders to agree an operational plan. The structure could include an overall small executive board, a technical committee (possibly with regional sub-committees) and some kind of plenary assembly which all stakeholders, national and international can be involved.
A preferred route would be to start with a smaller structure geared to completing the work already carried out by FAST and getting endorsement for it. It would be closer to the approach adopted for developing the global TV audience measurement guidelines by the Audience Research Methods (ARM) Group for the GGTAM process. It is possible that this will emerge as the preferred route. However, online audience measurement is considerably more complicated than TV, with site-centric measurement providing a major additional component, in addition to the panel-based metering and recall techniques used in TV measurement. If it is decided to adopt this simpler approach, the organisations involved need to be confident that they will be able to impose their recommendations on the rest of the industry.
The immediate step is to convene the stakeholders, which will define the scope of the project and the management structure. In the case of TV, this was easier because of the existence of the EBU and the established nature of the business. The group should be representative of the industry and small enough to be effective. Traditionally data supply companies have been excluded from such meetings. However, as this is such a technical field, it makes sense to include them. A Steering Group could include organisation/company representatives for the advertisers, the agencies, the publishers/enablers, the data suppliers/auditors with project management handled by ESOMAR and ARF. The global nature of this business means that at some level there should be representation of regions as well as other stakeholder groups. This group could define the scope and scale of activity. They would delegate the work to a technical sub-committee who in turn would need to leave much of the drafting to consultants (probably one US based and one European based).
If consensus on the structure is reached, the first draft guidelines could be released for industry consultation mid-year and agreed guidelines could be issued by the end of the year. As with TV, it is likely that these initial guidelines will be fairly basic and that there will be pressure to continue and develop the work in subsequent years. The ARM GGTAM project for TV took 11 years to produce three publications of increasing sophistication. This initiative, prospectively titled GOAM (Guidelines for Online Audience Measurement) could be initially planned to last three years and produce two publications - an initial set of basic definitions and guidelines for creating currencies and a more sophisticated and detailed set, developing and making more specific the initial work. That said, this is a developing market far from maturity and it is likely that work in this area will need to continue for more than the initial three years.
Organisations or individuals who would like to be involved should contact Ted Vonk at ESOMAR
t.vonk@esomar.nl.
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.
