WFA sets out stall on online measurement
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US-- The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has said that digital and interactive media “should embrace the same standards and practices as traditional ones” and called for the industry to develop a “broader, more accurate and consistent set of information about online media audiences”.
In a position paper, WFA said that online media “is still in the process of defining itself” and that advertisers “need to see online measurement evolve into integrated systems that correspond to their actual needs”.
WFA said that too many measurement systems are “site-centric” as they were initially designed to provide publishers with visitor statistics.
The association said: “As they have been independently developed, the methodologies, metrics and definitions tend to differ, meaning their outputs are not often comparable and will not realise their full potential.”
WFA said that future measurement systems should use the same criteria used in traditional marketing and media research to categorise audiences, fully describe each individual's online activity, provide dated and timed information about the contact between a viewer and a website and provide audience measurement figures “exclusively according to definitions and metrics pre-established and agreed upon at industry level”.
Any industry-wide audience measurement system, WFA said, should be set up and managed, or at least monitored, by an independent body to guarantee accuracy, impartiality and transparency.
As far as setting up guidelines to detail the methodology for any new system, WFA said the “active involvement” of an industry body such as the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) would be “welcome and strongly recommended”.
The full WFA paper can be read here.
Author: James Verrinder
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