New forms of online marketing call for new ways to measure it
With the quick pace of evolution in e-marketing that targets online shopping behavior, it’s helpful to have different approaches at measuring the effect of marketing on Internet traffic and consumer activity, experts say.
One issue Internet measurement firms are trying to reconcile is server-based data—which uses software to automatically track consumer Internet traffic—with surveys that ask consumer panels how they use the web. “Data our clients are getting from their own web logs or server data tends to overstate traffic 30-50%,” says Manish Bhatia, president of global services and U.S. sales for Nielsen Online, a unit of The Nielsen Co. that measures Internet traffic and online advertising activity.
One way Nielsen is dealing with this situation, he adds, is by tagging its clients sites with tracking software, then automatically refreshing web pages every few seconds to capture traffic data, and combining the results with data from panel surveys.
Nielsen Online has also expanded the scope of data it collects from meters placed on the personal computers of participants in consumer panels. Instead of tracking only when panel members turned web browsers on or off, it now tracks all personal computer activity to reveal whether a panel member is actually on the web when her browser is open or perhaps working in a word document.
Nielsen is also tracking now time spent activating online videos as well as online games, including exposure to any ads within video or game content, Bhatia says.
ComScore Inc., meanwhile, is also expanding its services while continuing to work on new innovations in monitoring Internet activity, says senior analyst Andrew Lipsman. The company’s new Ad Metrix Publisher service, launched last fall, shows where online display ads are viewed across the Internet and demographic characteristics of consumers who view them.
“We’ll see more innovation this year,” Lipsman says. Among the targets of that innovation are widgets, or software applications that sit on consumers’ desktops and serve as tools to entice consumers to a particular web site. “We’re expanding our definition of widgets and including more of them in response measurement,” Lipsman says.
The more competition between the Internet tracking firms, the better, says Andy Fisher, director of analytics for marketing services firm Avenue A | Razorfish, which specializes in managing Internet marketing strategies.
“I see the difference in Nielsen and comScore as a good thing,” he says. “We want innovation. We want all the measurement companies out there to come up with some better ways of measuring things.”
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