Nielsen to rate Asia, digitally

SINGAPORE – Digital video is forcing a showdown between traditional TV ratings and the internet’s individually focused metrics of clicks, bounce rates and dwell times.

Many companies are looking to bridge the gap between and Nielsen announced today that it will bring its flagship digital advertising measurement solution, Digital Ad Ratings, to many of Asia’s dynamic markets. The product already launched over the past few weeks in Singapore, Japan and Indonesia. Over the next few months it will also roll out to the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia.

Stuart Pike, Nielsen’s head of digital audience measurement in Southeast Asia, North Asia and Pacific summed up the approach this way for Campaign Asia. “Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings solution brings the ability to accurately measure the audience reached for digital campaigns thus bridging the divide between traditional and digital campaign measurement.”

The aim is to give the media industry an accurate methodology for measuring online audiences, reach, frequency and gross rating point (GRP) metrics, as well as demographics such as the age and gender of ad viewers. Putting all that together should give advertisers a clearer window into the effectiveness of digital advertising campaigns.

“The ability to deliver an ad to a particular demographic is a critical success factor, especially for branding campaigns,” Pike said. “Marketers have long been able to see the audience their campaigns have reached on traditional media, but there has been a significant gap in digital audience measurement.”

The measurement combines Neilsen’s own online data with third-party (aggregated, anonymous demographic) information from other providers. The process is patented and covers twelve markets globally, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Megan Clarken, the company’s EVP of global-watch product leadership said in a morning release that “in markets where Digital Ad Ratings has already been rolled out, like the US and UK, it is transforming the advertising landscape by bringing standardisation and accountability, and helping advertisers and agencies gauge the return on their investment for every dollar they spend online.”

Nielsen highlights that its system also measures smartphone and tablet audiences in addition to desktop traffic. Since much of Asia is leapfrogging to mobile devices without lingering at desktops, this could offer significant insight to the region’s advertisers.

In short, the Digital Ad Ratings product tags campaigns for the duration of execution. Nielsen collects impressions and pairs that information with demographics using third-party consumer data sets. All that gets calibrated within the company’s audience measurement panel. Feeding into that, publishers report daily metrics (platform and demographics), which should give an aggregate audience view across desktop and mobile platforms (reportedly without duplication).

Jennifer Gardner, North American media investments and partnerships director at Unilever, a Neilsen client, said through a company release that “Digital Ad Ratings is an exciting resource that brings a more rigorous standard to our online campaigns and consistency in measurement strategy across our portfolio of brands.” Gardner also put an emphasis on using the system to discover where the ROI can be found in a campaign.

Unilever and Mondelez International are two large advertisers already using Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings product.