New system for web measurement finds many takers

Online measurement business has found its track and is moving forward, as new companies embrace measurement tools. The Nielsen Company has cashed in on this trend and has gained many new companies seeking services of its market intelligence service.

Samardy, a Vodafone company, ITP Group, Propertyfinder and Orange have signed agreements to benefit from the service that employs site-centric measurement and demographic surveys.

Earlier in February, Nielsen announced that Maktoob.com was the first to sign up for its online services launched in the Middle East and North Africa.

The system examines site performance, usage trends, content and product placement, audience circulation, visitor loyalty, search engine performance and visitor behaviour. The system was initially launched with analytics and later included online surveys to determine demographic and psychographic profiling of web users.

Announced at a press conference held yesterday, experts in online measurement expressed their concern about the differentiation Nielsen would provide versus free systems such as Google Ad Planner.

Husam Jandal, Internet Business Consultant, WSI, said: "They might have to face the challenge of differentiating themselves from similar services offered for free such as Google Analytics and Google Ad Planner.

The latter, he said, is able to provide information on users, gender, languages, locations, age groups, among others, thus defining audience by demographics and interests.

Jandal said: "However, this newly introduced system in the region has a lot of potential because of Nielsen's local representation, which reveals a much closer commitment to the region than Google and other free service providers."

In response, Piyush Mathur, Regional Managing Director – Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan, The Nielsen Company, said the market intelligence system offers standardisation.

Mathur said Google Analytics provided different results based on different methods of tagging, for example. "The other differentiator is the fact that we are audited to make sure the methodology is consistent across the board, and hence our partnership with BPA Worldwide.

"Moreover, it is all about what you do with the data. We offer research and consultancy to help reach the target audience."

Nielsen will utilise its global partnership with BPA Worldwide, a global company that provides consumer and business media audits, to help improve the transparency and credibility of the online medium to advertisers.

Glenn Hansen, CEO and President of BPA Worldwide, said: "The 'BPA Powered by Nielsen Online' solution offers website traffic metrics providing an industry standard that provides advertisers and media buyers an apples-to-apples comparison when making their marketing decisions.

"There is a number of web measurement tools available to media owners, but this new solution will create a level-playing field with a single set of standards, provided on a constant basis and performed by an accurate analytical tool."

Tahir Khalil, Associate Director, Head of the Finance Practice and Nielsen Online, said: "Measurement methods are almost similar at the end, yet, what matters is the value-added service, consultancy and relation with advertisers in this market."

He said the following stages will see rolling out of AdRelevance and Buzzmetrics in the next two years.

AdRelevance is an online advertising intelligence-gathering tool, while Buzzmetrics is a global standard in measuring consumer-generated media.

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