The Interactive Advertising Bureau has released the final version of its Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines in a move to establish an industry best practices for online audience measurement.
“It gives advertisers who use the numbers more confidence,” said Joe Laszlo, director of research of IAB. “They can be certain even though numbers come from different sources they are being created with the same kinds of processes and rigor. It makes things more accurate and transparent.”
The new guidelines define metrics such as “unique users,” “unique cookies,” “unique browsers,” “visits” and “time spent.” They also establish a framework for methodologies so that vendors can audit how they reached their metrics.
The guidelines aim to give clear and consistent definitions of these key metrics in measuring online audiences. The idea is to create a single standard for measuring Web audience sizes. Until now vendors have put out their own metrics that did not follow any industry-wide definition.
The guidelines are the result of an industry-wide initiative led by the IAB and included the participation of publishers, agencies and auditing organizations.
“This is about the industry coming together in a consensus, and we hope that it makes the industry even more accountable than it already is,” added Laszlo.
