Advertising Media Planning goes Online

Media planning tools for online advertising have arrived this week in the shape of new tools from Jupiter Media Metrix. The company's research-based Internet ad planning resource promises to bring reach and frequency estimates to Net campaigns for the first time.

Up until now, Jupiter claims that media planners/buyers have been unable to calculate their media buys using the tried-and-tested, traditional methods. However, the company hopes that its new 'Advertising Planning System' will enable clients to evaluate their advertising before running work online.

The system operates by estimating the number of unique individuals that will be reached given an ad buy of any size on any site or online channel, based on the number of gross advertising impressions, or Gross Rating Points (GRPs), purchased. The number of unique visitors reached in the client's specified demographic target with a particular ad buy can also be ascertained.

Coupled with the average frequency of exposure, the system then reports the Target Rating Points (TRPs) for each element of the buy and the campaign in total targeted to a specific demographic. Finally, pairing the TRPs and GRPs with a detailed cost analysis allows planners to adjust proposed campaigns to allocate ad spending most efficiently.

Jupiter has built its new resource on its 60,000-member U.S. Internet audience panel - its longest running and most established set. Usage is evaluated at both home and work. The underlying research model itself has evolved from testing on over twelve million ad-server simulations for 22 demographic entities across the 100 largest websites tracked. As such, some 350 different ad packages have been tested per site, resulting in over 2,200 unique reach-frequency curves.

Jim Spaeth, president and chief executive officer of The Advertising Research Foundation, suggests 'The provision of viable reach-and-frequency models for the online media is a watershed event. They lay the essential groundwork for effective cross-media campaign planning. We're intrigued with the audience panel-based approach developed by Jupiter Media Metrix.'

Will Hodgman, president of Jupiter Media Metrix's measurement business, added 'This is a major breakthrough in the evolution of Internet research and advertising. The bottom line is that Internet advertising is moving out of its infancy. While novelty and editorial context alone were sufficient reasons to gamble an investment online in the past, advertisers today require accountability and justification for media-mix allocations. Given today's competitive pricing in Internet advertising and the planning tools now available, there has never been greater promise of results and value in investing ad dollars online.'

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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