As digital media evolves at a rapid place, ad metrics are changing too- and advertisers need to adapt fast to ensure they are getting return on their investment. Jerry Wright, Global President of the IFABC on the future of global digital measurement standards.
Over the last few years the speed of change in the way we create and consume media has been rapid and unrelenting. The media industry globally is now operating across multiple platforms; publishers are increasingly launching digital products and using those boundary-less platforms to publish content on websites, in digital replicas of print editions or in stand-alone digital publications. As the market for such products grows, so too does the need to make money from them. However, with advertising this can be difficult if there is no way to prove the scale and so the value of investing in these new digital platforms.
GroupM reported that global digital advertising spend exceeded $98 billion in 2012, a figure that represents approximately 19 per cent of overall global ad spending and a 16 per cent year-on-year rise, a trend reflected across all established and developing global markets. This increased spend comes from advertisers and buyers exploiting a plethora of these new digital opportunities which transcends borders and brings ad content to new, global audiences. However, the digital world can be something of a minefield for advertising buyers who are wrestling with challenges such as tracking advertising activity on multiple platforms, rights and fees, brand safety, and its complexity in general. To have to consider these issues on an increasingly global scale is even more of a challenge and without internationally recognised and accepted standards clarity could be nigh on impossible. Advertisers and their agencies also want to be able to document usage and performance on a global scale, and therefore some globally consistent metrics are becoming ever more relevant. Media owners also need an internationally recognised set of guidelines against which to measure the success of their brands.
Industry bodies such as the International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations (IFABC), with locally-based organisations operating in 50 countries across the world, are naturally well-placed to respond to the demands of the industry on an international scale. Its well-established Web Standards Group has established measurement standards and metrics covering everything from browsers and page impressions to email delivery with the objective of establishing a framework of standards at a global level which are then built on as required in each local market.
These standards are publicly available and are constantly being reviewed to ensure they meet the needs of the global advertising industry.
Tablets have had a huge impact on the digital media landscape and media owners globally are turning to this new platform to provide a much-needed additional revenue stream. The first set of IFABC global definitions and guidelines were published in 2012 by its Digital Publications Committee, which draws its expertise from Europe, the US, Latin America and Asia-Pacific. The aim of the group is to provide the global media industry with a useable set of guidelines that offer transparency to media owners and media buyers, planners and advertisers into the reach of this new platform as it grows. These guidelines are currently being reviewed in light of the group’s global experiences over the last year.
An example of a brand that is already embracing cross-border measurement is The Economist, which issued the first ever Global Consolidated Media Report with data from AAM in the US and ABC UK. The report has shown audited data for The Economist’s global print and digital entities across seven regions, a real step forwards for media buyers around the world, who can now access reliable print circulation and metrics from multiple digital channels.
The focus so far has been on establishing a global set of standards and guidelines, as establishing global measurement ‘rules’ which are universally accepted and more importantly, recognised, is not simply a case of one size fits all. Even drawing up the guidelines has not been an overnight process and until further standardisation is reached, international brands will still come up against difficulties when measuring global reach. However, as individual audit bureaux continue to work with IFABC’s global guidelines and the industry increasingly looks to work with globally-planned and measured campaigns, the IFABC is ready to play its part in creating the framework that will help to bring that about.
By Jerry Wright
Global President
IFABC
http://www.ifabc.org/
