Microsoft has teamed up with ComScore to develop a digital media planning technology that aims to help brand advertisers measure reach, frequency and audience composition at the ad placement level online.
The new technology, called the Reach and Frequency Planner (RF Planner), will use Microsoft’s ad serving data combined with demographic information from comScore’s panel to determine these new metrics. The tool is aimed at brand advertisers.
“We are attempting to make the Internet accountable for brand advertisers just like the Internet is accountable for direct response advertisers,” said Young-Bean Song, senior director of the Atlas Institute, a division of Microsoft Advertising. “Showing them click through rates of campaigns is not going to convince them why the Web is a good place for their media dollars. This partnership will bring more traditional media metrics — for example, target, reach and rating points — to the Web.”
The RF Planner will forecast various optimized digital media plans for brand marketers based on the target reach, frequency and gross rating points at the ad placement level. So for example, a marketer can look at which online impressions make sense for a brand buy.
“We know that Yahoo has a big audience, but there is a big difference between running an ad on Yahoo versus the Super Bowl,” said Song. “When you advertise on Yahoo, you are not going to reach everyone who goes there, as it is a vast network of many different pages. Each impression will result in a different amount of reach and a different amount of frequency.”
