RFP on its way for UK online audience measurement panel

13 February 2008

Joint Industry Committee for Internet Measurement Systems to issue request for proposals in the next few weeks

UK-- Research agencies will soon be invited to submit proposals for the creation of an online audience measurement panel as the first step towards an official planning and buying currency for online media.

A request for proposals (RFP) from the Joint Industry Committee for Internet Measurement Systems (Jicims) is “extremely likely” in the next few weeks, general manager Peter Bowman said today.

Speaking to Research, he said support among advertisers and media owners for a common online planning currency had been “solidifying” since his appointment 11 months ago, and there was now “tremendous goodwill and agreement” between the four Jicims shareholders – the Association of Online Publishers, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, the Internet Advertising Bureau, and the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers.

Bowman said the RFP would call for a “user-centric” measurement system, as opposed to a “site-centric” one, to bring online in to line with the way traditional media audiences, including TV, radio and outdoor, are measured.

“What we want to do is concentrate on the internet user: what sort of person they are, and their behaviour across websites,” he said.

The RFP is likely to spark the interest of online audience research specialists such as Nielsen Online and ComScore, and established media research companies like BMRB, GfK, and Ipsos, as well as TNS which recently won the contract to run the Barb TV measurement panel from 2010.

Bowman said the Jicims contract could be in place by the end of this year or early 2009.

Author: Brian Tarran

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