IAB Aus Puts Off Endorsement of Nielsen Digital Method

Digital ad trade body IAB Australia has says it will not at this point endorse the methodology for Nielsen's new-look Digital Media Ratings. The measurement giant announced a 'soft-release' of the new system last week, for clients only.

Nielsen and IAB announced in September last year that they were working on a new future-proofed audience measurement system, and the association believes the latest Digital Media Ratings are a step forward on the road to this, but CEO Gai Le Roy (pictured below) says that 'In the limited time frame for review, the IAB is currently unable to support the tagged monthly audience data... as outstanding methodology concerns and data queries remain unresolved'. These include 'the broad range of variation and inconsistency of impact on unique audiences under the new methodology'. Le Roy adds: 'The IAB Board and Measurement Council will continue to review this new product for future short-term endorsement and currently advise caution in reliance on this new audience data in Digital Media Ratings for ranking and direct comparisons of audience and per person derived metrics'.

The new data includes monthly unique audience, reach share and rankings for tagged entities. Nielsen MD Pacific Monique Perry (pictured top) told mumbrella.com.au that the company fully supports the process through which the IAB is working and understands its stance. She adds that Nielsen 'is working to help the market understand that there is a trend break from January 2021 for tagged publisher audiences as we transition from the old methodology to the new one, and the size of this trend break will be different for each publisher. The variances are different for each publisher because they are dependent on the sites unique audience composition (device, browser, off platform). The new methodology produces consistent audience reporting from January onwards and Nielsen is confident these audiences represent the key trends in overall audience for all publishers'.

Web sites: www.nielsen.com and www.iab.com.au .