Digital audience measurement measures the audience for online content.
The norms here differ greatly from those that are applicable for TV and radio.
The fundamental
construct in any audience measure is what constitutes media consumption. In the
case of digital audience measurement this construct is call a “view”, which is
defined as at least 50% of pixels seen for a specified period of time (usually
1 second or 2 consecutive seconds). This definition is IAB/MRC (Interactive
Advertising Bureau in conjunction with Media Rating Council) compliant.
Importantly only human audience is to be measured, which means that the
measurement service must exclude web crawlers or bots and fake impressions, and
it must monitor the incidence of ad stacking or stuffing. Service providers also need
to identify and segregate “shilling”, or any form of paid/incentivized interactions intended to inflate the audience measurement.
In addition to GRP,
which is based on views (reach) and frequency, metrics for digital audience
measurement include in-flight measures such as on-target rate and viewable rate
across partners and placements.
Service providers
include Nielsen (DAR — Digital Ad Rating) and comScore (vCE — validated
Campaign Essentials).
