NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Limit difference in Third Party Serving?
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Limit difference in Third Party Serving?
David Zinman (dzinman_at_adknowledge.com)
Fri, 11 Sep 1998 08:29:59 -0500 (CDT)
"Kim O'Connor" <koconnor_at_upside.com> wrote:
> We have been getting more and more requests from agencies at
> Upside.com for third party ad serving.
>
> While I understand the need for an agency to have their
> reports be consistant....I am having a bit of trouble with
> the sometimes huge (IMO) differences in the number of
> impressions their software and ours (Ad Force) comes up
> with.
>
> Especially with Ad Knowledge, as they count differently then
> most (all?) other major options out there.
This post begs the eternal question: "How Should The Industry Measure an
Impression?" It comes up at least once a week on the discussion list,
and it was given a great deal of air time during the debate hosted by
the Online Ads Discussion list a few months ago.
The participants in the debate nearly universally agreed that we should
measure impressions as close to the true number of times that an ad
shows up on a viewer's screen as possible. Unfortunately, the IAB's
recommendation for measurement, to count an ad insertion, overstates the
true number of adviews. It recommends counting an impression whenever an
html page with an ad tag on it is sent to a browser. Why is this
important? Because this is the source of most of the differences between
AdKnowledge counts and site counts.
As Kim mentioned, most sophisticated web advertisers are starting to use
3rd party ad serving systems, like our SmartBanner service, to improve
their return on investment from web advertising. In fact, over 100
agencies and their clients are using AdKnowledge products to automate
the planning, buying, trafficking, and reporting for web ad campaigns.
Of course, since our systems count adviews, which is the transmission of
an ad graphic, and most site systems count ad insertions, our counts are
typically slightly lower than site counts.
> Will all the ad serving software companies finally get
> together and decide on ONE definition of an impression (ad
> views seems the most fair as long as cached impressions are
> also counted) so this industry can take off and we all can
> benefit...especially the clients, they are the ones we all
> work for right???
The only way an issue this complex gets solved is by the adoption of a
standard. The good news here is that the industry is aware of the issue,
and the FastForward organization (formed out of the P&G Summit) is
committed to proposing something by year's end. Also, I recently joined
the IAB's Standards & Practices Committee, and we are determined to
review the issue as well. Hopefully, quick action by these groups will
be followed by relatively quick adoption by ad-supported sites and
technology vendors.
Believe it or not, this formula has worked in the past. The IAB
recommendations for standard ad sizes has largely been adopted by the
industry. According to data collected by the AdKnowledge Planner, which
tracks information across 1200 ad-supported sites, from June 1996 to
June 1998 the number of ad packages using the IAB's standard ad size of
468x60 went from 115 to 801. Let's hope that we can make the same kind
of progress on measurement standards!
DEZ
* David E. Zinman, Founder, Dir of Product Mgmt
* AdKnowledge, Inc.
* 2191 East Bayshore Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94303
* Phone: (650) 842-6508 / Fax: (650) 842-0665
* mailto:dzinman_at_adknowledge.com
* http://www.adknowledge.com
*
* AdKnowledge. We make web advertising work.
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