MUMBAI: The Nielsen Company has been appointed by UKOM, the UK Online Measurement body, as its official partner to create the UK’s first currency for planning advertising campaigns on the Internet.
A similar online audience measurement service is planned to be launched in India soon, which will help media planners and agencies to get access to accurate data that has helped grow ad spends in the largest online markets of the world.
In addition to the UK, Nielsen provides the currency of choice in France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, China and South Africa. In early September, Nielsen also acquired KoreanClick, the leading Web measurement company in South Korea, making it a global leader in online measurement across 30 markets.
"We are delighted to help UKOM build the UK’s first industry-agreed online planning tool. Our selection–supported by media, advertisers and agency groups – demonstrates the marketplace’s confidence and trust in the reliability, consistency and validity of our online media measurement. As with our strategic alliance in the US to develop products to measure ad effectiveness online with Facebook, we are committed to partnering with our clients to help them compete in the marketplace. We look forward to working with UKOM and continuing to play this significant role in realizing the tremendous potential of the Web as an advertising medium," said Nielsen online division CEO John Burbank.
Set to launch in January 2010, the UKOM Audience Planning System (APS), powered by Nielsen, gives advertisers and their agencies the ability to plan media schedules around a single, benchmark source of highly accurate and consistent online data, just as they currently do in the UK for TV, radio and print media.
"This comes at a time when we are about to launch a similar online audience measurement service in India, which will help media planners and agencies to finally get access to the same extensive and accurate data that has helped grow ad spends in the largest online markets of the world. It will be the first currency for planning advertising campaigns on the Internet in the country," said The Nielsen Company associate director online division Karthik Nagarajan.
Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) CEO and UKOM director Guy Phillipson added, "The UKOM Audience Planning System represents a genuine milestone for the online industry. For the first time, advertisers and agencies will be able to confidently plan campaigns using industry-approved audience data comparable with traditional media, such as TV and press. Nielsen’s original submission to be the supplier of this system was a close match to UKOM’s exacting brief and we have worked closely with them, taking advice from all stakeholders, to hone the final specifications. I’m confident the UKOM Audience Planning System will transform the medium for brand advertisers."
Providing the all-important online reach and frequency metrics that agency planners require to build media schedules, the planning system will supply UK online audience data for sites with at least 50,000 unique visitors a month, and more.
In 2008, according to the IAB, the UK Display Ad market was worth £637 million ($1,020 million) – 90 percent more than in 2005. However, display’s growth has lagged behind the other two major forms of online advertising – search (up 159 percent) and classifieds (up 173 percent). The planning currency will help display advertising grow much faster by giving advertisers the confidence to commit more budgets to this form of advertising.
