ARF Audience Measurement 2.0 Conference: the State of Internet Media Measurement

Last week, following two grueling weeks as a part of Comscore’s IPO roadshow team, I spoke at the ARF’s Audience Measurement 2.0 conference in New York. Bob Barocci, the ARF President, had organized a panel to address the issue of “Internet Media Measurement.” My fellow panelists, representing third-party measurement firms, industry-leading end-users of the data and publishers, were Lynn Bolger (VP, Advertising & Sales Insights at Yahoo!), Beth Uyenco (Global Research Director, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions) and Mainak Mazumdar (Chief of Measurement Science at Nielsen//NetRatings). Our moderator was Mike Shields, Senior Editor at Mediaweek magazine.

Our discussion covered a wide range of topics, but chief among them were the following:

1. A recognition of the inflation in site-server counts of unique U.S. visitors caused by cookie deletion, unfiltered bots and spider traffic and the failure to accurately exclude International traffic. (If you would like more information on this subject, the Comscore cookie deletion white paper is now publicly available here.)

2. An acknowledgment of the critical role that third party panels play in helping the Internet industry measure the ROI of Internet marketing. Online advertising is beginning to be used as a brand-building strategy and to accurately measure its impact requires the ability to monitor consumer behavior over time and across channels (especially offline) – measurement challenges that panels are uniquely suited to address but which site servers cannot. It was noted that online advertising, while growing at a 30%+ annual pace today, still only accounts for about 5% of all U.S. ad spending. Much of the 95% that remains offline can be viewed as advertising that is intended to deliver multiple ad impressions to consumers. Because of the deletion of third-party ad serving cookies, panels are needed to accurately compute reach and frequency.

3. A concern that today’s auditing methodologies (such as that employed by the MRC) may force premature standards to emerge and make it impossible to measure future innovation – which seems to be occurring on a daily basis in the Internet industry. Lynn Bolger had an interesting observation, likening the situation to “standing in quicksand.”

I enjoyed being a part of the panel and contributing to a lively discussion. My thanks to Bob Barocci and the ARF for inviting me to participate.