Cross-industry committee issues Industry Blueprint for Online Audience Measurement in Australia

    An Australian cross industry committee representing website operators, advertisers and agencies, has issued an Industry Blueprint seeking expressions of interest from international and Australian research or technology companies to develop and run a self funded enhanced or new audience measurement methodology for the Australian online advertising industry.

According to Dr Stuart Pike, Chair of the Committee, the Blueprint has drawn from the World Federation of Advertisers own Blueprint and is primarily focused on finding an efficient and meaningful measure of people, as opposed to purely browser based measurement.

"The industry acknowledges that there will always be a variety of different numbers from a range of sources available to online website operators but the primary purpose of any new measurement methodology is to have a consistent way to review and report numbers for selling and planning online media.

"We need to guide the transition of audience measurement in the industry to accommodate the increasingly complex media consumption behaviour of consumers. It's time for measurement systems to leave their single media silo approaches and accommodate multi-media measurement," said Dr Pike

Measurement methodology responses proposed need to measure and profile Australian internet traffic visiting any domestic or overseas sites and applications. The core measurements must be founded on people based measurements rather than browser / server side based measurements. Although planning and selling are the primary goals, any methodology that can efficiently and accurately link this data with campaign management and analysis will be reviewed favourably.

A degree of flexibility and adaptability is also crucial. With technology changing in this industry at such a rapid rate any measurement system needs to be flexible enough to change with it. The measurement systems should not be locked in to the PC environment, but rather measuring traffic over any IP enabled device.

Any company that responds to the Blueprint will need to be capable of developing a similar methodology and technical solution for other digital platforms, including mobile and interactive TV at a later date.

The deadline for responses is 23rd September 2007.

The full Industry Blueprint is available from the IAB Australia website: www.iabaustralia.com.au

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