NetValue, a French-owned Internet monitoring company founded in 1998, this month launched an online advertising measurement service, NetValue Ad-Impact, designed for advertising agencies and inhouse marketing departments.
It was launched first in the United Kingdom and France and is slated to be available in Germany and Spain next. A rollout in the 10 other countries where NetValue is active is planned before the end of the year.
The product was built from two databases — NetValue Online, which provides demographic and behavioral data on Internet usage; and Adnettrack, a database developed by Secodip, a subsidiary of Taylor Nelson Sofres, the world's fourth-largest market research company, with which NetValue has a global partnership.
Adnettrack uses a robot to monitor all new Web site advertising — banners, buttons, rich media, frames, sponsorships and others. In all, more than 400 European Web domains are checked daily.
Spokeswoman Jannie Cahill said NetValue Ad-Impact delivers top ad rankings, the number of unique visitors, the percentage reach by target audience, the frequency of exposure, behavioral analysis and creative execution.
It also helps users in campaign planning by telling them who is advertising, whom they should target, which competitors are advertising, when they should advertise and where the ads would be most effective.
“Together,” she said, “this data will help ad agencies with the increasingly complex task of planning, buying and reviewing advertising on the Internet.”
Two British interactive agencies have signed up so far — Profero and AKQA.
“NetValue's data allows us to have a more sophisticated understanding as to how Internet users behave online and detailed information on who is seeing our communications on hundreds of [millions of] Web pages,” said Profero CEO Daryl Arnold.
Cahill claimed that NetValue was the leader in Internet measurement because it measures and reports on all aspects of the Internet, not just the Web. NetValue also measures e-mail, secure connections, instant messaging, audio and video.
“For instance,” she said, “we were able to provide figures on the actual use of the Napster application, not just visitors to the site.”
She noted that NetValue focuses on home use of the Internet only and claimed that “we know more about online consumers than anyone else.
“For example, we know their age, sex, income and employment type, how long they have been online, what ISP they use, what mobile phone and mobile network they use and whether they have satellite television.”
The panoply of these services is available in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and the United States. The company also has less complete information on home Internet universes in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Korea and Taiwan.
The company is headquartered in Paris, has 180 employees in a dozen countries and is listed on the Nouveau Marche in Paris. Funding came from French venture capitalists.
